Formative Years
by S.Zix
Summary: New weapons surfaced in the war between Wutai and Gold Nation, produced by Shinra Manufacturing Works. Its president, rumors said, collected intellectuals like glass dolls in an effort to catapult his company into a state of unrivaled supremacy. He didn't account for the unfaithfulness of young men in a world without rules. He didn't count on losing his company to his own son.
1. Weapons from the North

I feel like I have to talk a little about what this is, even though I don't like forwards. This is, in short, a story about how Shinra Electric Power Company rose to power. I've gone through source material, read through games, and decided on how to hash contradictory information together as best I can. I wanted to start early, before the world really knew what Shinra was, and how they first heard the name. As such, there are countries of my own design, there are original characters derived from things like official artwork, and a lot of world-building material. I wanted to write a story about Bugenhagen and President Shinra, and I'm still doing that, but it became more about The Planet, Shinra, and how they shaped each other. It was a bit of a struggle, but I hope it's worth reading.

-Zix

* * *

**Formative Years  
**

**Prologue**:** Weapons from the North**

"I never used to smoke; I started when I lived with the Phoenix tribe. Don't get me wrong, it isn't like they had to be high all the time to cope. Believe me, I'd understand. It's just that they have to burn everything. When something burns, it releases its spirit and comes back stronger. I think the joint is the only time they ever got it right."

-Paer Rolfe, first architect on retainer, Shinra Manufacturing Works

* * *

"The enemy is climbing the mountain. There are about thirty with your mako weapons."

Paer flicked the lit rolled Madroon plant from the edge of the table to the waste basket beside it. "I'll mourn the loss of uncivilization."

"You can help us." Abner leaned into the earth of the tunnel behind him. The mineral smell of the new halls winding through the mountain left Paer relaxed when he should not have been, hiding in the womb of the earth. "Though I do not trust you."

Table legs scuttled. "You don't trust me? I built you a mountain fortress, I stole steam drills and weapons from _my _people. I—" but he couldn't say the last thing, not least of all because Abner knew it, and yet it did not phase him. To know another man's darkest insides and barely blink—how could people like that live in this world?

"I'm not a tactician," Paer said at last, swallowing his indigantion. "I built this place because it made sense, and it's kept your bird alive a hell of a lot longer than those Kjatas, the Typhoon tribe your people used to share this land with, and those stupid fairies—what do you call them? Some uninspired monosyllabic bullshit like 'Spill.'" Paer clutched his forehead and waved his left hand in front of Abner's nose. "If you aren't going to take my advice, then why are you here?"

"Because I want to take your advice," Abner said, stooping to pluck the joint from Paer's waste basket. He blew on it as if this would make it sterile once more and placed it in a pouch tied shut with Phoenix feathers at his waist. "I am here so that you will give me an excuse to follow the direction of the man who built the fortress of our enemy."

Paer sat back down and opened the drawer in his desk. He'd snuck into Junon to steal one just so he could have a nice wooden desk with a drawer in it. The natives would have been even more suspicious of him for chopping down a tree to build a desk—not because they hated chopping down trees, but because they associated such behavior in recent history with Gold Nation—so he had to risk his life for one. He looked at the single red sphere he'd laid inside, hearing it roll around.

"Set your men on the mountain with muskets and the few Shinra weapons you've managed to take. If you want this"—Paer scooped up the sphere and passed it to Abner—"then it's yours. I don't know what else you expect me to do."

Abner lowered his eyelashes, clutching the stone. "I expect you to give the orders."

Paer tossed back his head and started to laugh, then thought better of it. Sun and a necklace of Phoenix feathers given to him by Abner's daughters had made them look more alike, but he swore Abner would always be smarter than him. "That's how it is." Paer wiped his mouth and stood, clutching the back of his chair. He shook his head and clapped Abner on the back. "First big confrontation since we built this place, and you want me to take the roll. It's fair since I made it for you, but even if it fails, it won't ruin everything else I've done for your bird. When you're scraping my name from the walls in this hill, don't you dare forget it.

"I want you to give the orders," Paer repeated. "Oh, Abby, _classic_." Paer held out his hand. "Give that back to me, then. I'm using one of the cannons."

Considering this for a moment, Abner fingered the pouch at his side as if he were itching to use the rolled Madroon already. Then he handed the red stone back to Paer and watched in horror as the man kissed it.

"Don't you love Shinra?"

Abner twisted his lips to the side. "I'll prepare everyone. Get to the top of—promenade?"

Paer supposed Abner loved Shinra Manufacturing Works about as much as he had meant for his last sentence to come out as a question. The Phoenix Tribe, living in what Paer had designed and dubbed "Fort Condor", blamed them for everything that had changed. Paer left his office and followed the tunnels he'd drilled to a rope. A small room with a sweeping walkway—Promenade—wrapped around the top of the mountain, all made from Junon scrap. Paer could grimace at his deplorable work, but he found himself satisfied by the fact that he had managed to build something by drilling through a mountain and cutting as little wood as possible without it caving in on him.

Morning wind cleaved into Paer's lungs, and he looked out from the mountain—more of a foothill, really—that dipped in the center of the prairie. To the east lay a large mountain range, to the west, an arguably more impressive coastal base also designed by Paer. The land outside Junon stood marked by craters. Much of the grass had turned brown. Pieces of straw and phlegm nesting, golden feathers, and blood knitted through the dirt. He remembered what the landscape had looked like when he'd taken a boat over from Costa to what would become Gold's new city, Junon. Little orange men lying on the grass in canvas tents and giant, gold and red birds making the sky look as if someone had taken flint to it. It had smelled like bird shit, but he'd gotten used to it.

The Phoenix Tribe was lucky as far as inhabitants of the Wildlands went. Once, it had been populated by a great many different peoples and giant beasts, revered as gods by the natives. Now only a Phoenix, one Leviathan, and a handful of wild chocobos remained. Wutai and Gold waged war on every scrap of Planet they could find. Paer supposed that the winner ended up with the most land. Wutai, attacking from the Mideel continent, had managed to occupy the bulk to the east of the Great Range, while Gold's forces had been stalled by the Phoenixes in the west. Gold had hired Paer to build military bases—that meant a bunch of the steel in Junon and that little outpost on a circle of land Gold had managed to steal by taking a ship around north.

Paer'd completed his work, dignity falling out from under the straps in his overalls, without complaint until he'd done something stupid. Just done it. Like he'd just stolen the desk. Like he'd just started to look like he'd gone native, fallen in a vat of Phoenix feathers.

* * *

"Pick up the new shipment from Shinra Manufacturing," Corporal Goddard had told Paer, about a year ago, straightening the Gold Nation flag wrapped around his left sleeve. His hair was greasy, his eyes glassy, and his skin pale from the wound he had taken the previous week and the poison in his blood.

They stood in the War Room, the Gold Nation banner dipping so low that it almost grazed Paer's head. Paer had always been large, 1.9 meters and stocky for an architect. He'd started out as a construction worker in Costa, apprenticed under a contractor for the Rafael Estate. A few suggestions favored by Rafael's head of house—paneled instead of stone siding, more windows in the front, kick the fountain in the foyer—had put him on the fast track. His background and the amount of time he'd spent in Junon with the military made him a prime candidate for manual labor while the boys waged war on the front lines. Paer and his contractors had completed most of the construction a year ago, and they sat around on their hands waiting to build new bases or take repair jobs when they came up. Those Gold aristocrats sure knew how to spend their war money.

"Shinra?" Paer raised an eyebrow. "Never heard of them."

"According to the Sergeant Major, it's going to send those Phoenix men rolling. We'll be able to cross the mountains to Wutai and take out the chivies as long as the Gold aristocrats can negotiate an exclusive."

"Where they from?"

"Icicle."

Paer whistled and kicked his heel against the base of the wall. Solid—well, no one paid much heed to a buckle here and there. "Getting an exclusive from a company based in Icicle is like trying to build a house made outta' doors."

Goddard rolled his eyes. "Just have your boys pick up the crates at Port 1B in an hour. I'll send another corporal with distribution instructions. There are only enough for some of the officers."

"Seems a little inefficient, doesn't it? Why not order more if they're so suave?"

Goddard headed for the door past Paer. "I trust the Sergeant Major's judgment." Then he left.

* * *

Far below the Fort Condor promenade, men in uniforms ringed the foothill, turning the grass black. Paer had set up the staff supporting his hand canon, hoisted the iron piece, cleaned out the barrel, and rested it against the rail. He didn't have any flint, nor had he used a hand cannon more than once, but he didn't intend to fire it anyway. A small, half-sphere dimple at the base clung to the materia stone from his desk drawer, picking up sunlight and splattering red across his chin.

He removed another Madroon joint form his pocket, realizing that he had no means to light it. Shrugging, he put the end in his mouth. Residents of Fort Condor appeared from hidden holes in the foothill. Phoenix people, rising from dirt and soot.

"Alright," he called, knowing that the group below him would pass his words down. Years of invasion from Gold had taught the Phoenix people his language, but he had just started to learn theirs, so he spoke in his own tongue, taking some pleasure at the unintended insult. "Wherever you stand is where you're staying. This is the best time to act because the Phoenix is asleep up there. He'll wake up eventually, but in the meantime, we're standing between him and, for all intents and purposes, every man of Gold. Things get iron-plated, make sure you leave more than a few around you, pop back in your hole, and find the medic with the cure materia. The slope itself will hold them off for a while.

"Most important thing?" Paer ran his hand over the red stone in his hand cannon and felt a sting slip into his fingers.

"Stay out Kjata way!" hundreds of Phoenix men cried.

The men of Gold below answered with a rejoinder and started climbing.

* * *

Humidity in Junon after hauling big crates for several hours reminded Paer of vacationing when he had been four, and his ten year old sister had buried him up to his chin in sand on one of Costa's beaches. The illusion of being unable to move lest the whole world fall in on him had been building since Goddard's injury, so that part wasn't especially new.

The Sergeant had gotten bitten by a Kjata trying to travel over the mountains, and poison had begun spreading through his body. No one had gotten close enough to a Kjata to get bitten by one before, but men had seen three of the beasts prowling the Great Range. Red, yellow, and blue shaggy manes bristled as the rocks skittered to the base of the mountains. When three privates turfed Godard at the Junon hospital, bleeding from a gash in his side and almost completely green, Paer had sat on the roof, watching Phoenixes and praying that, just once, they would treat a man of Gold like one of their own, burn away his humanity, and bring him back to life. They didn't listen, of course, but they sang as they flew over Junon, spinning like pinwheels in the sky, and Paer imagined they cried. It sounded like a harp, playing on its own, missing a string.

Godard, the doctors said, had a month to live. He would get weaker; it was best if he went home and stayed with his family. Sergeant Major Crescent promoted Godard instead. Paer hadn't expected to care so much, but living in a war zone as one man's roommate for three years made him hate Sergeant Major Crescent.

"So boss," Greg said, wiping sweat from his face with a kerchief, "what's in these?"

Paer didn't answer his contractor immediately. He told the man in the red Shinra waistcoat "thank you, that would be all," and "please get that god-awful tug boat outta' here before a Phoenix blows it sky high." The man nodded, grateful to get away from the Wildlands. Steam left sky scars as the boat headed north.

"Boss?"

Forty crates. Paer had counted forty crates. By weight, he guessed they contained two different kinds of guns. At first, he had expected an elaborate, multi-part contraption, but they came only in two sizes, which made this guess unlikely. More firearms were always welcome, but how were forty of them going to change anything?

"It's confidential," Paer said. "A corporal is supposed to arrive with a list of officers."

"What's so damn confidential about hand cannons and muskets?" Paer and his contractors had handled enough artillery on delivery jobs—and in training; living at a military base meant you needed to know how to fire a weapon—to know as well as he what those boxes contained.

Good question. Paer scanned the harbor. From his pier, he could see the other five harboring parked, deserted warships. A few soldiers in black uniforms with the Gold Nation flag latched around their arms marched up and down the docks, humming along to their drills. No one noticed Paer and his contractors. "You want to stick our noses in it?"

Greg grinned, stretching out a mole on his chin. "I'll get a crowbar."

Anthony and Blue, who had also helped unload the crates, opened one of each size. Paer cracked the lid and cleared away bleached grass to find hand cannon parts: a long black barrel bearing an etched diamond Shinra logo and the number forty seven, a wooden spear broken into three segments with metal clasps, flint, a box of fuses. He picked up the cannon to get a closer look.

"There's a hole in the hilt," Blue said, holding a heavy wooden musket from the other box.

Sure enough, when Paer turned the barrel of the hand cannon over in his arms, he saw a half-sphere indent in the iron mold. It was about the shape of—

The night the privates had brought Godard to the hospital, he had gripped a green stone from Mythril Mines until it made bite marks in his palm, and an orderly had had to pry it free from his fingers. The corporals had all been sent to the Mines to search for the same rocks. Then, there were the ones at the Rafael estate, displayed in glass cases on violet cushions…

"Hey!" a man shouted, and Paer froze, still clutching the hand cannon. "Hey!" He wore a black uniform and the unmistakable yellow corporal "C" on his left breast. His lower jaw jutted out, and though Paer had never met him, he could tell he wasn't happy. "You aren't supposed to open those."

The contractors cursed, but Paer just stared at the corporal as he tore the hand cannon from his arms, bruising his fingers. "What exactly are you guys planning to do with those stones you got back from Mythril Mines?"

Then the corporal froze too. He nearly dropped his liberated cannon. Sweat formed on his forehead, under his black beret. "You'll hear about it soon enough."

"My roommate's dead because of those things," Paer told the corporal. "I think you better tell me now."

The corporal shuffled. He lowered the hand cannon back into the box and shook his head. "Actually, there's a small chance he isn't."

* * *

When thunder made eardrums bleed, Kjata's hooves still drowned it out. When men fell, Kjata's massive body covered them. Though Gold had Typhoon, a purple wisp of anise, Kjata had been the first species extinct, the first to crystallize in memory. Its use had made it large enough to cover a fifth of the foothill's slope. Paer felt it tug him through the materia, the flesh plastering its horns, the bones breaking in its jaws.

The poison running under its skin.

* * *

Shinra Manufacturing Works called them materia. For decades, the wealthy had collected them from springs in The Planet as valuables, and five months prior to Godard's accident, the Works' star employee, Catherine Drake, had figured out, if not what they were, at least how to use them. Godard said that a young professor, Gast Faremis of Icicle College, had translated documents referencing the use of naturally occurring stones to access the memories of The Planet. Men can access and revivify these memories through a connection between something else from The Planet that has been remolded by him. Something like a weapon, and Catherine Drake had developed the technology.

In the field, these weapons could blast chasms in the ground, scorching scores of natives and freezing entire contingents. One stone even made earth shake beneath enemies, swallowing them whole.

Unfortunately, the corporal Paer had met on Pier 1B had been wrong about the technology saving Godard. A couple of the green ones would heal Godard's wounds, extending the time he had left to live, but magic memories reported in Faremis' work to cure poison remained elusive. He was still dying. This information made Godard bolder. Eager to access more materia in Mythril Mines—dubbed so earlier in the war because miners from Corel had been taken there and had discovered vast mythril deposits in addition to the then apparently useless materia—he climbed The Great Range with a musket imbued by Earthquake and fought the Kjata beasts. He came back to Junon later, leaking his insides through cavities easily healed by materia and grasping a bright red stone.

"It appeared when I killed the third one," Godard told Paer. "The first two I killed merged with the last one. Its mane became pink, and it grew violet horns. It threw lightning storms, fireballs, and froze my legs where I stood, but I defeated it, and the red glimmer that remained kept me from passing out."

Yet the poisoning the Kjatas had done while he attacked them worsened his overall condition, and the doctor told Paer that Godard would be dead come morning light. Paer thought part of his rage stemmed from the red glow scratching at his corneas. Why wouldn't he put that stupid marble down? He punched Godard hard in the jaw, even as he lay in his bed, defenseless.

"What the Hell is your problem?" Pair demanded, shaking out his knuckles. Blood ran, tinged black by the poison, from the split Paer had made in his lower lip. Then the idiot had the _goddamn nerve to smile_.

Paer stood from the chair at Godard's bedside and stooped down to pick up the Sergeant wrapped in blankets. Paer had expected the man who had slain the three Kjatas of the Great Range to be heavier. The poison played tricks, and he felt so light in Paer's arms that he thought he would dissolve as surely as Godard had said the Kjata had.

"What are you doing, Sir?" A nurse wearing a yellow Gold Nation beret put her hands on her hips when she spotted Paer kicking the door to the hospital open. "You can't just take—"

Paer didn't let her finish before he went through the door he had kicked open, and it slammed shut behind him.

"What are you intending to do now?" Godard sighed as Paer held him in the stairwell of the hospital on the second floor. Paer began attempting to shift Godard's weight to one arm, but he at least proved too heavy for that. He would have to find some way to carry Godard up the ladder that led to the roof before the nurse got the nerve to call security after them.

"You think you can climb a ladder?"

"Does this mean you're done being over-dramatic?" Godard rolled his eyes. In them, Paer could see cold glass, as if they had begun to freeze over and fracture. "I walked all the way back from the Great Range on my own."

Paer cleared his throat apologetically and lowered Godard, helping him stand. "We're going to the roof."

"I figured as much. I also know you won't tell me why—for god's sake, stop crowding me." Godard removed Paer's arm from his shoulder. "Why couldn't I have bunked with the other corporals? You designed the barracks so cramped just to have someone to torture."

Paer watched as Goddard wobbled toward the ladder and latched onto the highest rung he could reach. At this point, it was clear that he could barely lift his hands above his head. Paer winced.

Every building in Junon's base had a ladder leading to the roof in case of an overhead Phoenix attack. So far, the Phoenixes that swooped low over Junon did not bother to breathe fire or even acknowledge the invaders from Gold as long as they remained within the outpost. On the battle field, however, they flew high and lit the grasslands, burning soldiers like dry trees.

After a few minutes, Paer and Godard made it to the roof. Paer had cringed several times when Godard's hands slipped on the ladder rungs, but the Sergeant always caught himself before he fell backward. Once he had made it to the roof, he sat at Paer's feet. "I suppose I'll kick out faster this way," he said.

Paer surveyed the sky, seeing smoke from burning coal rising over the squares that dotted Junon. The stars bleached the metal and the wood, and for a moment, Paer fancied himself in Purgatory, clutching Godard's hand as Hades drug him below.

But he was not clutching Godard's hand; he was standing above him and scanning the sky for a firework. It did not take him long to find one. He wondered if he'd gone mad, but he reminded himself that this was the only chance in the whole world that Godard had. He raised his hands around his mouth and called as loudly as he could. "Phoenix!"

"What are you _doing_?" Godard hissed, grabbing at Paer's pant leg. "Do you want to get yourself killed?"

"Phoenix!"

Godard tugged hard, and Paer almost fell over, despite Godard's sickness and Paer's size. "Shut up. If I had known you were this stupid…"

As if it could actually recognize its own name, the Phoenix turned in the sky, away from the mountains to which it had been flying, flipped in the air, and dove for the roof of the hospital.

"Run, you idiot," Godard said.

The needles clawing up Paer's back told him to listen to Godard, but instead he whooped and waved at the giant red bird.

As the Phoenix dove closer, Paer could see its eyes, the golden feathers of its wings tapering off violet and emerald. It stared at the man from across the sea and asked, 'what makes you think you deserve it?' It drew closer still, and Paer became fixated on the sharp of its yellow beak and black claws, Godard mumbling "stupid, stupid, stupid—"

Paer couldn't keep his eyes open. Just as he closed them, he felt energy wrap around him, squeezing his chest like a Corral cave-in. His insides turned to mist even as tissue burned just beneath his skin and steam came wafting from his pours. All his exhaustion and weariness vanished, and he felt himself falling, as if he had tripped off the roof of Junon's hospital. The sensation evaporated. Paer let the cold creep back. Bird shit and fire spice cloyed his nostrils.

One eye opened to see the Phoenix flying away, already several meters into the sky above and heading back toward its original destination, the Great Range.

"Paer?"

Paer looked down to see Godard, pink-cheeked and breathing hard. His hands still clutched at Paer's pant leg, but Paer spotted vitality in him that he hadn't seen in the past two weeks. It had worked, Paer felt sure of it. The Phoenix had restored Godard's life to him.

"Yes, Sergeant?"

Godard pulled himself to his feet, still shaking. His eyes thinned like ghosts, belying his obvious recovery, but the ice had melted. "What the Hell is your problem?"

* * *

A loud shriek sent hope and apprehension down the foothill. The Phoenix had swooped from its nest, its claws grazing above Paer's head. The death of all but one had made it stronger, had made it the memory that materia would seal should it fall that day. Yet it came to the aid of the people in the mountain, spitting fire and bringing men back from the brink of death.

Fire warmed Paer's lips; he looked down to see the ember flickering merrily at the end of his joint. He breathed in Madroon, letting it untangle the tension in his brain. Phoenix always seemed to understand people better than other members of their own species.

Paer could see Abner, misty-eyed and just below him, toting a gun imbued with fire materia. The old man fell under the flame, and stood up again, flesh tinted gold.

* * *

Everyone in Junon started calling Paer "Falconer" after news of Godard's recovery and the circumstances surrounding it spread. Some said he had leapt twenty feet into the sky, wrapped himself around the great bird's neck, and steered it to the ground where he spoke in "screes" to get it to do his bidding. Then he had flown off, riding the Phoenix, to blow up half the Wuteng forces on the other side of the Great Range. Damn chivies never knew what hit them.

Paer passed the time with his contractors in the bar while Godard remained tied up in officer's meetings. No one in the Phoenix tribe or in Junon had mounted an offence since the incident, but Paer guessed they had planned something big. They had, apparently, tested out the red stone Godard had brought back and determined that it was some sort of materia, but his roommate would not tell Paer anything more.

After Blue, Anthony, and Greg went to their bunker by the docks, Paer would go back to the hospital and climb up to the roof where he watched the Phoenixes fly. He thought he loved this land even more than he loved the sandy beaches of Costa del Sol. It wouldn't be so bad to live in Junon, falling asleep to Phoenix crooning every night, in steel walls with holes only he knew. When the Phoenixes finally went to the lone mountain to roost, Paer would walk home to find Godard eating and bitching about some sergeant or other who didn't agree with him.

One evening, Godard came back from a meeting after Paer had made dinner and gone to sleep. He slumped onto his bunk, waking Paer, but not acknowledging him.

"Sergeant?"

"Go to sleep."

"I left some beans on the stove," Paer said. "You should have some."

"You can't cook anything else, can you?" No response. "I'll pass."

The room they shared seemed more like an emergency bunker. It sported two beds and a coal stove in the corner. The room contained a desk and a chair, but only because it was also Paer's office. Godard had mentioned—when not dying and climbing up a ladder at Paer's whim—that he preferred it to the stuffy room packed by corporals and bunk beds. As a sergeant, he could have had his own room, but he'd waved off the offer at his promotion. Paer guessed he had not wanted to die alone, but Godard had not asked for a reassignment since his recovery either.

Paer got up to finish the beans and turn off the stove, but Godard interrupted him. "If there was an easy way to finish this war, would you do it? No matter what?"

Since Godard had downed the Kjatas, it occurred to Paer that the seemingly immortal god-beasts that the natives worshipped were no longer immune. Paer thought about the Phoenixes in the sky, to which he owed a great debt. "Sure. A lot of things would be worth that." Paer forced a spoon from the pot of beans to his mouth, running the cayenne over his tongue.

"Thanks," Godard said.

* * *

As soon as Typhoon, Slyph, and Titan, a gift from the other side of the Great Range, fell, Gold's forces started slipping down the foothill. Kjata's memory would fracture soon, and it too would return, but its rampage had not ended. Its hooves severed heads. Fire, ice, and lightning broke men into scraped pieces.

"Fall back!" Paer heard the words in his own tongue. The joint almost fell from his lips. He had not expected it to work so well.

"Chase them back to the sea," Abner shouted.

Paer rolled his eyes. If they over did it and went to level ground instead of allowing a retreat, he would not be held responsible for Abner's over-zealousness. Hell, he'd only pilfered a Wallace drill and dug some tunnels. As long as the Phoenix didn't follow them, Paer couldn't bring himself to mind.

"Godard," Paer said to himself, "no matter what."

* * *

Paer woke the morning after his late conversation with Godard to the sound of the worst lightning storm of his life; the crack broke through his skull and forced him to tuck his pillow over his ears as he extricated himself from the sheets and dashed to the window—

Only to find a clear, blue sky, offset by smoke.

A battle with the natives; someone had Lightning materia. It sounded close—close to _his _fort town, which he had designed with love for every steel panel and ten foot deep dugout. Without putting on a shirt, Paer shot from the barracks and followed the noise to the hospital at the outskirts of the town where he again climbed to the roof to try to ascertain his surroundings.

Soldiers already stood atop the hospital: a handful of corporals and another sergeant toting the new Shinra muskets. Yellow tongues stabbed the sky when soldiers ran their palms over the butts of their guns. Paer looked out and saw six Phoenixes circling, dodging bolts as they fell from the clouds and instead rolled natives like fat quilts over the grass.

"You're firing at the Phoenixes," Paer said.

The sergeant glared at him, missing part of his beard from, Paer guessed by the small square of paper, a poor shaving job. "Yeah. His orders." The barrel of his gun pointed in a direction Paer hadn't looked, closer to Junon.

The biggest damn Kjata Paer had ever seen, exactly as Godard had described it. Above it circled a phoenix, flying jerkily, as if its wing were damaged, below—

Paer turned back to the sergeant, tore his musket form his arms, and bolted down the ladder. It seemed easy for about a minute. None of the soldiers expected Paer to take a musket from a sergeant during a battle. None of them had any idea what he intended to do with it—Paer couldn't blame them; he didn't either—so they remained still until Paer had made it out the door of the hospital.

There were men just outside Junon too: privates holding regular muskets and hand cannons, also made by Shinra. They bit their lips and buried their feet in the dirt, waiting for the battle to draw closer or for someone to give orders to charge. No one paid Paer heed as he ran toward the giant Kjata on the field and the man standing behind a planted hand cannon several meters from its back.

A torch of lightning fell before the Kjata, narrowly missing the Phoenix circling and screeching. The man behind Kjata had his hand on the base of the cannon, and Paer took his appearance without shock.

Godard, hair greasy, this time from sweat, stood and watched as Kjata and Phoenix tore each other apart. His head turned, and his eyes locked Paer's.

"Call it back," Paer demanded. He felt out of breath, but not from the running.

"I have to do this," Godard said. "The Phoenixes can bring the dead back. With its materia, Wutai is ours. They all have to die, no matter what happens to the people here."

"Screw the chivies, screw the natives—hell, screw Gold," Paer yelled. He adjusted the musket on his shoulder and took aim at Godard.

Godard rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to Kjata and the Phoenix. "What are you going to do with that? You barely know how to shoot it."

"All the more reason to listen to me," Paer said. His finger had found the trigger. One small iron piece sat stopped up inside. The sergeant on the hospital roof had had no reason to shoot, so far off, but he would have loaded a shot and some gunpowder, just in case.

Godard's eyes widened, but he appeared otherwise unmoved. He clutched the hand cannon and remained intent on Kjata. "I have to take it out."

An ice storm started above the Kjata's horns, spinning into a discus. Paer felt his teeth chattering.

"It isn't your life anymore," Paer said.

The discus flung through the air, just as Phoenix released a fire ball from its mouth. The two projectiles collided, but the discus sliced through the fireball, turning it to smoking halves of a rock, and continued its path, sharper. In the next moment, its edge sliced through the long neck of the Phoenix.

The head fell first, rolling in the sky, landing with its beak stuck in the ground. Then the body followed, bursting into flame and disintegrating into ash. Spice and char infiltrated Paer's nose. Energy turned Paer's insides to mist.

Paer's first fallen Phoenix burned away his human parts, he supposed, because he could only think of its pieces falling around him. The empty green eyes of the bird turned to glass; the severed head in the ground displayed them like materia orbs on stands. Sweat in his eyes, Paer thought, finding it difficult to see, definitely sweat.

At least on his trigger finger, on the trigger too.

* * *

Paer's fingers shook as he pulled the joint form his mouth. His lips had started to blister. As soon as Gold's forces had turned tail, still falling under fire and Phoenix pinions, Paer had stopped paying any attention at all to the proceedings. At least Abner had the spark to keep his men on the mountain. There were cheers and a few mourning hymns as they began to vanish back inside the Fort through hidden holes.

The Pheonix Tribe had resisted Paer's advice at first, but they were assimilating. They had one thing in common with Paer; they cared more about the stupid bird than anything else. Paer had named the Fort "Condor" as a joke. Condors were little chicken-like birds that roosted in the streets of Nibelheim and a small village called Reit nearby, where Paer had been born. Nothing majestic or remotely wild about them; it had been a joke, but the more Paer thought about it, the more the nickname seemed to fit. The Phoenix people were tucking in their wings and becoming Condor people.

Paer started turning in when he heard Abner calling from about a fourth the way down the mountain. The chief held his musket at the back of a man in a red waistcoat. Familiar. Where had—

Then Paer raised an eyebrow. He chuckled to himself. How had a man from Shinra gotten all the way over to Fort Condor? Imagine, a guy like that marching out of Junon to peddle his materia weapons to savages. Maybe the Gold forces had gotten soft if they hadn't noticed. The Phoenix people must have no idea who he was, or he'd be dead. Paer stomped the remains of his joint, still smoking slightly on the promenade.

"He asks for you," Abner called. "Should I kill him?"

"Take him to my office," Paer replied. "I'll see him."

When Paer got to his office, the Shinra man stood in its center. Abner still had his musket pointed at him. That's when Paer noticed that this wasn't just a Shinra employee, but a chivy. He had slanted eyes, soft sideburns down his face, and the narrowest shoulders Paer had ever seen on a man.

This guy had even more nerve than Paer thought. Surely he hadn't come through Junon?

"He come from beach," Abner said, "in a boat. He was looking for Paer Rolfe, and I said I know you, but I've never seen a man look like this. I didn't think he was your people."

Paer didn't have people anymore, so he supposed Abner was right. "Thanks, Abby, you can go."

Abner twisted his lips reluctantly. Paer supposed that, before the battle that day, he would have insisted on staying, but a bit of tentative trust had finally formed. Abner slipped out, waving his musket as he went.

"You know who I am?" the man said after Abner left. He spoke Paer's tongue very well, but his accent still came through, carrying the question at a high lilt at the end.

"I know from the waistcoat that you work for Shinra," Paer said, "and I also know that you're pretty gone trying to come in that close to Junon, looking like you do. You're also gone for asking to see me. I don't have fondness for any race in particular, but I'm iron-plated against yours."

The Wuteng laughed. His eyes curled back into his head. He carried his arms around his waist at a sharp angle, as if his elbows wouldn't straighten. "I am Kane Tuetsi, Vice President of Shinra Manufacturing Works. I immigrated to Icicle from Mideel."

Paer shook his head and sat down in his chair. He opened his drawer to put the Kjata materia back inside. "That's some tapestry you've got."

The man who called himself Tuetsi cocked his head. "Tapestry? I'm not familiar with Gold Nation slang. It's one of my failings."

Paer scratched his head. "You expect me to believe something like that is all. What would the VP of the corporation that changed the world in a year be doing in my office?"

"The President has heard of you," he said. "He's very interested in intelligent people, especially young ones who have yet to form entrenched loyalties. You say we changed the world in a year, but your achievements here"—Tuetsi swept his arm around Paer's office—"are nearly as impressive. A Gold Nation retreat for the first time since we exported the Drake Weapons."

Paer had a feeling he knew where this went, but it seemed ridiculous, so he had to ask anyway. "And?"

"And our company is interested in offering you a lucrative position in Nibelheim, designing for us."

Shaking his head, Paer leaned back in his chair. "What would a Weapons Manufacturer want with a guy who builds forts?"

"I've heard you've also designed some of the newer mansions in Costa del Sol." When Tuetsi grinned, it felt like a knife slice.

"The question still stands."

"I think it's best if you ask this of the President. He is eager to meet you in person, but some business detained him in Icicle, so he sent me instead to fetch you. Would you accompany me?"

Paer whistled. "You're serious, aren't you?"

Tuetsi's stance did not change. Paer stared at him for a minute until he fell forward in his chair and shook his head.

"Your information is wrong. I do have loyalties, and they're to that big bird up there." Paer pointed to the ceiling. "I can't leave."

"Excuse me, but can you do anything else?" Tuetsi shifted his weight to one foot, surprised. "I was under the impression that your work here was done. You've shown your human friends how to sneak into Junon for supplies, and you've built this fort. I've heard you aren't very good with a weapon, and anyone can use materia."

Paer licked his lips. "Iron-plated." He shook his head. "You're honest."

"The outcome is obvious," Tuetsi said. "Stealth tactics will let the Phoenix people sneak into the base at Junon, but not the other way around. They have a summon creature that isn't constrained by the strength of its materia casing, the first and strongest summon materia"—Tuetsi's eyes skittered to the back of the desk drawer containing Kjata—"and this fort. There's nothing left for you to do, unless…"

When Tuetsi trailed off, Paer crossed his arms. "Phoenix, just spit it out already."

"It's just that, I rather thought you would want to get out of here before you had to watch everyone in the Junon base die. It'll be your fault when they lose this war."

Paer couldn't believe Tuetsi was still standing, a meter away, in the center of his office. He could have sworn that he'd leapt forward and punched him in the stomach. He released a low whistle. Again, he hadn't expected to care. He hadn't thought about it much, and he'd been sure the Phoenix had burned away all his human parts when Godard's Kjata killed it. For the first time—he should have thought of it before!—he realized that, no matter who won in the end, he lost.

Abner knew it too. "I do not trust you," was what he'd said.

Swallowing and massaging his temples, Paer stood. His legs, thick from all the running and building he'd done lately, seemed as thin as Tuetsi's chivy sticks. Would they take him anywhere? He almost laughed. All those uncomfortable things caught up to him. The sturdy desk. Greg, Anthony, and Blue. Even the sergeant he'd stolen his musket from. Then his Fort town. Did he want to stick around and see Junon burn?

When Paer had been little, his ten year-old sister had buried him in the sand and left him there until the tide crawled all the way up to his neck, and he'd started to cry. Then she'd dug him out, complaining, "I don't see why you couldn't just break out on your own."

Paer closed his eyes and listened to the mountain, he listened to the banging of steel a field away in Junon, the steam ships, silent and empty in the harbor. No one begged him to stay. Deep breath, Paer. Just hope Abner doesn't shoot you in the back on the way down.

Then Paer opened his eyes. For a moment, Paer thought about calling Kjata again to stab the smug grin from the chivy's face. He'd give it to him, though. The man knew he'd won, but if he didn't bend those damn elbows of his, Paer swore he'd—

Deep breath.

"Where's your boat, Tuetsi? I want to meet this Shinra."

* * *

Beta: Clan Dragoodle

Please review.


	2. Chapter 1: Collector

**Chapter 1: Collector**

"When my wife asked me to marry her, I told her that she could make many more prudent alternative decisions. She responded, 'You're too weak, and I'm too lazy, so we'll never use knives. That's why this'll work.' Then she poured two glasses of Mideech and got me intoxicated enough to agree. She was half right."

-Kane Tuetsi, Vice President of Shinra Manufacturing Works

* * *

At the start of the war between Gold Nation and Wutai, there were two large power companies; neither of them were Shinra. One was called "Nibelectric Corporation," which ran out of Nibelheim, exporting mainly energy from the coal mines in Corel, where much of Gold Nation found employment. Lizveta Palmer worked as the company's CEO and President. The second company, translated roughly from Wutai dialect to "Mideel Light, Incorporated" was run by Ruigo Ran. The smaller company focused on wind and solar energy.

Kane Tuetsi started his career as a research assistant in the theoretical sector of Mideel Light, so he found himself privy to much suspicious information surrounding the start of the war. The small size of Wutai did not allow for the placement of massive solar panels and windmills that would allow Mideel Light to expand, so they'd pressured the Pagodo gods to push into the central continent. Gold Nation—perhaps even Nibelectric—wouldn't allow such a thing to go unchecked, so they also sent their forces, and war had been the inevitable conclusion.

A few years after the war began, Catherine Drake of Shinra Manufacturing Works developed the Drake Weapons with materia slots in them and sold them to Gold Nation for more and more money as they continued to ask for additional arms. The massive profit had left The President of Shinra Manufacturing Works greedy for more innovation. He'd used his money to scout minds all over the world to do anything at all—as long as it made him rich. This is how he became interested in the energy business, its power, and, more specifically, Kane Tuetsi.

Kane Tuetsi got little recognition for his theoretical work in farming. He thought it possible to build biological engines, fed by the crop boom that occurred during the war, but Mideel Light had considered the idea dangerous because of the volatile nature of the harvest and the mounting demand for energy to power private homes. Instead, President Shinra had gone after him. Tuetsi's new wife, Ruvie, could not move to Icicle because of a delicate health condition, so he had unwittingly bargained himself into the Vice President position of the company.

"So how'd you get this job if you're a research guy?" Paer spoke through narrowed eyes as he sipped from his beer. It had taken the two week trip on the steam engine from the southern coast of the East Continent to Icicle to get the large man to loosen his lips around a Wuteng like Kane. Tuetsi noticed, however, that once he started talking, he didn't shut up.

"I kept saying no until The President offered me a salary almost as large as his to grow crops in a field that's barely fertile and splice animal genes. I swear I don't know what I'm doing, and he's made a gamble that won't payoff, but my wife wants a baby someday. Besides, if The President cannot buy the man he wants, he tells me I'm his best option."

Paer grinned and wrapped a lanyard of Phoenix feathers around his index finger. "Oh? Not as bank as he thinks you are? Who's he really after?"

"Johannes Bugenhagen," Tuetsi said, running his hand along his chin. "That is, I believe, where you come in, though I suppose I should allow The President to explain himself."

"If he wants me on PR, he's an idiot."

Kane couldn't agree more. "That isn't it exactly, but far be it from me to try to understand his methods. PR isn't his strong suit; he isn't known for good decisions in that area. His son, I guess you could say he's the de facto Vice President, starts many debates over it."

"So that wife of yours?"—Tuetsi could tell that business talk did not interest Paer Rolfe much—"Did she come with you to Icicle?"

"She's still in Mideel. She has plans to move to Kalm after the war ends so that visiting her will be more convenient."

Kalm, as Kane had already explained, had been settled by the Leviathan people on the east side of the Wildlands. The people of Wutai had been surprised to find natives worshipping one of their gods, and had struggled against the idea of slaying their own kin. Instead, they had developed a treaty to protect that particular tribe over others. Kane Tuetsi did not believe those creatures to be Leviathan. Pollution from the steamboats and the coal drills used to make windmills on the eastern side of the Wildlands had started to turn the lake the creatures resided in murky, and their once blue bodies were graying, desiccating. It happened so fast, by all accounts, that Kane had begun to wonder whether or not it had anything to do with the people moving away, hardening without their gods. The Ancient text Gast Faremis had been excavating—

Feet thundered down the iron steps to the hull where Kane and Paer sat, drinking at the only wooden table in a long-stretching bar. A man in a red waist coat appeared and saluted Kane Tuetsi. "Sir, we'll be pulling into Icicle within the half hour. Please prepare to come above."

"No kidding?" Paer downed the last of his beer and stood. He had to hunch over in the hull, the ceiling came down so low. "I better pack. See ya up there, Chivy."

Tuetsi supposed that all men needed to cling to something in order to feel relevant. "Of course," he said.

* * *

Unimpressive. President Shinra had invested so much Sno—Icicle currency—in human capital that it left the décor of Shinra Manufacturing Works with much to be desired. It looked as impressive as the plywood crates that transported the Drake Weapons. Steel paneling, grimy from dirt and snow clinging, melting, and dripping, wrapped around the whole thing like a sheet. The rectangular building had three floors: weapons labs in the basement and the first floor, break and lunch facilities on the second, and administrative offices on the third. Much of the other research, like Kane's own work, took place outside the premises on the Icicle University campus.

A square etching of the words "Shinra Manufacturing Works" stood directly over the window-less double doors. Kane pulled one open and motioned for Paer to head inside. As they walked through the halls, Kane paid close attention to Paer's eyes, inspecting the dust, the closed offices and laboratories, and wondered that this world might seem less colorful and less fantastic than either Junon or its plains. Perhaps an architect like Paer would begin to understand the need for someone intimate with intention in design.

"It isn't very…" Paer scratched the back of his neck. His wrist pointed awkwardly toward the ceiling.

"Grand?" Kane offered. "I suppose it isn't."

"Your boss has the wrong idea. I get how someone who builds forts and military bases might seem—but I wouldn't build a corporate headquarters _like this_."

"The President understands that." Kane eyed Paer as he prodded one of the potted plants in the hall, a limp rhododendron that had no business near arctic climes. "Your work in the Wildlands and your designs in Costa del Sol all showcase very different talents, but have one thing in common; they emphasize functionality and purpose. You're a man who knows his clients, who knows precisely how they'll use what you design for them, and that's what The President wants."

A swift clacking down the hall dragged Kane and Paer from their conversation. Every employee of Shinra Manufacturing Works knew the walk better than the person to which it belonged. Its concise rhythm never faltered as heels packed down the linoleum. Each step came drawn out like the tide. Tuetsi could visualize Catherine Drake before she rounded the corner, weighed down by thick white folders.

A red suit jacket split open around collar bones and long neck. She let her blond hair fall around her shoulders, down to her hips. Her curves belied the rigidity of the cracked glass inside. She forced a pair of spectacles further up her nose as she spotted Kane. "Ah, Vice President," she said, holding out the files, "are you heading upstairs?"

As Catherine held out the stack of files, Paer extended his hands and took them from her as if this were the most natural thing. She spared him one raised eyebrow before her attention returned to Kane.

"Yes, I'm taking Mister Rolfe to meet The President."

Catherine's lower jaw dropped, but not enough for her lips to part. "Oh? I wasn't aware that Mister Rolfe hailed from the Wildlands." This time she looked straight up at Paer, trailing her eyes over his chest.

"I don't," Paer said. "I've just spent a lot of time there recently, Miss—?"

"Doctor Drake, please." Her attention returned to Kane as she tapped the foot closest to Paer, signaling the end of their side conversation.

To Kane's surprise, Paer snorted. At first, Catherine paid this no mind, but then the snort turned into a deep laugh. He shuffled the folders into his left arm and lifted his other hand to clap Catherine on the back, crumpling her shoulder pad. "I owe you the worst year of my life," Paer said. "Who'd think I'd meet you as soon as I walk through the door? You're full of yourself, aren't you?"

"If anyone has a right to be, it's me." Catherine crossed her arms, but she did not hide the smile pulling her lips. "Did you gather it by behavior or reputation?"

"Experience." Kane did his best to suppress an eye roll at Paer's answer.

"De_light_ful," Catherine said, revealing a few teeth. She looked to Kane again. "You don't suppose The President would be willing to transfer me down to Nibelheim with him?"

"I'm sure The President would do anything you ask of him." Kane took a step to the left indicating that he intended to circumvent the Head of Weapons Development. "Now, if you excuse us."

Catherine turned to head back to her office, from which Kane guessed she had come. "Be sure to deliver those, Mister Rolfe. I hope I'll be seeing more of you."

"I hadn't expected her to be Catherine Drake," Paer mused. He licked his lips, as if missing a joint. Kane knew that The President would have all sorts of smokables in his office prepared for the meeting.

"Too young or too attractive?"

Paer's long stride forced Kane to put effort into walking without looking flustered. As the Vice President knew his way around the building, it annoyed him that Paer wanted to take the lead.

"Nah, nothing like that." Paer made to open the cover on one of Catherine's folders, but Kane put a hand on his arm to get him to close it again. "You said she'd be young. Her guns are honest and imposing, but she's scared as a kid in the deep end."

"If you say so." Tuetsi shook his head. He paid Paer little attention as they approached the stairs and headed toward the third floor. Spending time thinking about Catherine Drake always struck him as a waste. She had too much of a knack for manipulating people. While none of Catherine's behavior in the previous exchange made her appear fearful, it would not surprise him to learn that she had intended to leave such an impression on Paer.

Kane would rather prepare himself for the upcoming confrontation with Simon Shinra. He expected to open The President's door to find his son leaning against the wall. Simon had lost his title to a theoretical energist from Mideel whose only administrative responsibilities consisted of escorting brilliant minds across the ocean when The President could not do it himself. Simon knew this. Kane knew this. The President had to know it, but he remained ignorant of conflict regarding the future of the company.

Kane also knew that, as soon as Simon found a way to prove himself to his father, he would lose his high salaried position and return to tinkering at formulas in anonymity. Then his wife would find herself neglected and disappointed instead of just the former.

When Kane reached the door bearing the plaque of "President Jonathan Shinra," Paer raised his hand to knock before the Vice President could stop him. The secretary seated at the desk outside the door stood and smoothed out her skirt, apparently as frustrated with Paer's ignorance of protocol.

"Hello?" The President called in an aging voice as limp as the rhododendrons of the hallway.

Paer appeared as if he wished to make his own introduction, but the secretary raised her hand to silence him. "It's Vice President Kane Tuetsi, returned from Fort Condor in the Wildlands with Mister Paer Rolfe to see you, Sir."

"Ah yes, please send them in."

The secretary wrinkled her nose when, instead of waiting for her to walk around her desk, Paer opened the door to Jonathan Shinra's office and showed himself in, nearly closing the door in Kane Tuetsi's face behind him.

If anyone would expect The President's office to contain more elaborate garnishing than the rest of the building, they would find themselves disappointed. He had a window which allowed him to look out at the other buildings of Icicle Mecha, most of which were taller than Shinra Manufacturing Works. One could at least obtain a view of the iced road and freckles of snowflakes drifting to dirt. The President sat at a mahogany desk, a black model of a pyramid from one of Doctor Faremis' most recent excavations acted as a paper weight tamping down the clutter.

As Kane had expected, Simon Shinra also sat in the office. He occupied the chair across the desk form President Jonathan Shinra, his hands folded under his red waistcoat in his lap. The young man had taken to cultivating a wisp of a blond mustache, which often twitched when he saw something displeasing: Kane, for example.

"Ah, Tuetsi." Jonathan's hairline had begun to recede, leaving time bites behind on his forehead, but he still possessed the thick arms and broad shoulders of a young man. Kane would not dare to guess his age beyond 'older than me.' "I see you've brought him." The President stood and offered a hand to Paer Rolfe, who shook it heartily, before resuming his seat. "You may call me Jonathan," he said.

"Paer." Rolfe cracked the same easy smile he had when confronted by Catherine. It seemed that he only frowned at the Wuteng.

"Well Paer," Shinra said, "I take your presence as indication that you're interested in joining our company."

"Yes, Sir," Paer said.

He at least had the sense to acknowledge a superior.

"Excellent," The President said. His eyes scratched Kanes's. "Has my Vice President told you the details? What figure did he have to offer you to get you to accept?"

Paer shook his head and scratched the back of his neck again. "It seems I've been away from civilization for too long. I'd forgotten about that dance, but I'd like to be expensive, as long as you're asking."

The President's smile reminded Kane of Da Chao's in both its width and its superiority. Simon frowned as Jonathan began to speak again. His father had hired another PR disaster.

"I wouldn't expect anything else." Jonathan pulled a drawer out from his office and produced a case of Corelian cigars and a large glass cylinder with a woman's waist full of platinum sponge and hydrogen. "I'm afraid we can't get our hands on anything but tobacco up here, but I've heard you've been living with a group that enjoys a smoke."

Paer placed a cigar in his mouth, leaned forward, and unlatched the stopcock, releasing a small burst of blue cornea burn. Kane flinched every time anyone used one of those volatile flint cans. Simon, who had been watching Kane, grinned.

Paer shook his head appreciatively. "It's different," he said, "but I knew I'd have to kick the Madroon eventually."

"My secretary can discuss your salary with you later." The President waved his hand as if this matter held no interest for him. "Your assignment, on the other hand, is urgent. You'll be heading to Nibelheim with my son, Simon Shinra."

Dutifully, Simon stood from his seat, inclined his head, and shook Paer's hand. "I want you to build Shinra facilities there. A mansion and a laboratory. The rest of the details are up to you, but I have a specific man in mind." Shinra took a deep breath for dramatic effect. When he did so, Kane thought he might breathe fire like the lighter. "Have you heard of Johannes Bugenhagen?"

Paer shrugged. "I can't say I have. Should I?"

Jonathan smiled Da Chao's smile once again. "Such honesty. Not to worry, I am certain you will get along well with him. He, like my dear Doctor Tuetsi, is a highly educated Energist, only he's most famous for being _old_. Nearly 100 years they say, and almost ready to die, but he gets smarter with each passing moment. Some say he's discovered something big, and I want it at any cost.

"We're branching out so that we can woo him. Us old men tend to be quite opposed to change, and that's the problem with Johan, but I can't pass up the possibility—imagine something even more impressive than the Drake Weapons!"

As he spoke of Bugenhagen, Kane always noticed that Jonathan Shinra leaned further forward on his desk until it pressed his stomach to his spine. For this, The President would leave creases in his suit. Paer, by contrast, breathed from his cigar, letting his eyelids cover half his pupils.

"So I build a couple things, and we're smoothed?"

Simon's mustache twitched. "If at all possible, my old man is interested in putting you on permanent salary. I think we should give you a trial first. If you prove to be too disagreeable or troublesome—"

"Simon," The President said, "please don't second-guess me in front of Mister Rolfe for at least another month." Laugh. "You've made your concerns clear, but we can trust you, can't we, Mister Rolfe? You're the best, after all."

Kane knew President Shinra enjoyed that particular tactic. "You're the best in the business, Tuetsi, and I'll do anything to have you." It took the new Vice President only a week after accepting the final offer to realize that another hand stood primed at his throat.

Paer opened his mouth to speak, but The President cut him off. "The secretary understands everything. She'll get you _smoothed_ on the details." He waved toward the door, and Kane, knowing that Paer would not get the hint well enough from the mere gesture, stood and opened the door to The President's office for him. As Paer walked out, still meditating on his cigar and looking more confused than ever, Kane closed the door behind him.

"This way, please." The secretary's voice grated through the door, and footsteps faded down the hall.

"What's your impression of Mister Rolfe, then, Kane? How much will it take to buy his loyalty?"

Tuetsi remembered Paer Rolfe—a crack in his forehead, the Madroon joint limp in his mouth—when he had told him he would have to either watch the Phoenix or all of Gold Nation's forces die.

"Paer Rolfe doesn't strike me as the kind of man to understand the concept of loyalty, Mister President. He abandoned the Phoenix tribe of the Wildlands without me offering him so much as a single Sno. If there's anything that will make him stay with Shinra Manufacturing Works for an extended period of time, it isn't money."

The President looked to his ceiling, a bare and crooked collection of corrugated tile. "There's always something. Young men are disagreeable at first, but they cement swiftly enough. Isn't that right, Simon?"

The President's son snorted. "If you say so."

"Simon was just telling me that Miss Tinning's most recent assignment is sure to be a public relations fiasco."

"Tinning's assignment, Sir?"

Erda Tinning was The President's first acquisition after Catherine Drake's breakthrough. He bought her employment even before the first exports left Icicle. Simon Shinra had insisted that a good product needs a good face, and President Shinra had agreed, but Kane would daresay that Miss Tinning had been far from what Simon had had in mind.

Tinning looked like a woman born from one of Wutai's great volcanoes. Igneous rock pushed free and cooled until it became solid, sharp, and shining. Unlike Catherine, she always pulled her hair up in a pair of Wuteng hair sticks, stretched across her scalp to the point where Kane thought it looked painful. She only wore solid colors—brown—and pressed suits. She shellacked her nails.

Miss Tinning took up all of a chair when she sat. She got in a person's face and blew smoke rings. She laughed, belittled, and fidgeted. When she left a room, however, it remained clean. One needed to struggle to remember if she had been there, to bring her face back into focus. Even the smoke and ash would seem to disappear.

One could not approach her, and one could not get along with her.

_But_ she was attractive. _But_ she was responsible for teaching the world how to use the Limit Break. Five years before the war started, Erda Tinning, an Icicle resident and breeder of domestic Bandernatches, discovered how to tap inner wells of adrenaline and unleash desperate energy when death seemed imminent. Kane had never tried it, or bothered to ask Tinning how she had gotten the idea, but the news spread to the world's military powers and women's self defense classes to the point where everyone in the world at least knew how to activate it. By the next generation, it would be banal.

Tinning had not made any money from the idea—until The President had decided she would serve as the perfect figurehead for his company. She had given away her Bandersnatches and purchased a large apartment on the tenth floor of an expensive complex in Icicle Inn. She bought suits, diamonds, cigarettes, and black glasses.

"I sent her to the great pagoda in Wutai to discuss the sales of Drake Weapons to members of their military."

At once Kane understood the problem. For the past year, Gold Nation's military had been the sole buyer of Drake Weapons. If Shinra Manufacturing Works were to sell the weapons to Wutai while the two countries still fought over the Wildlands—

"It's going to ruin the confidence of our clients." Simon folded his hands. "At the moment, they're eager for more products from us, and the aristrocrats of Gold will buy anything, but if we sell to the _chivies_ too"—Kane wondered if he only imagined the emphasis on the slur against his race; from Paer who had a shortage of clearly hateable enemies, Kane had not felt the bite as much—"why would they be so—"

"Where else are they going to get the goods we make here?" The President interrupted. Both he and his son had folded their hands on his desk. They wore identical expressions, and Kane imagined he could see Simon's metamorphosis into Jonathan in slow motion. His hairline would be the first thing to go. "Meanwhile, the Wuteng are able to pick our weapons up from the ground and use them for free. If things continue as they are now, Gold will begin to think we're selling to the Pagoda anyway. We might as well commit the crime before we're accused."

"That's just like you, President." Simon cleared his throat. "Once you crack the ice on the pond, you might as well fall through. We can't always make products like the Drake Weapons. We sell regular muskets, swords, clubs, knives—what will happen to these sales? It's true that none of our competitors have discovered the technology for manufacturing the Drake Weapons yet, but these items have also increased the sales of our other products."

"Who cares about those?" The President pulled a cigar from his drawer and lifted the stop cock on his lighter. A brilliant flare sent shadows hiding under his chin. "The things that this company will make with people like Drake, Tuetsi, and Bugenhagen! That Gast boy, too. He has potential. Who wants to sell sticks and slingshots when we could be powering nations more efficiently than coal allows?"

Simon's eyes grazed over Kane. "Be reasonable, President. Why are you so sure you can land Bugenhagen or that what he's hiding is any good? If it were, wouldn't Nibeletric be reaping the profits already?"

Chewing on his cigar, The President appeared to have forgotten to take a breath. Since Tuetsi had become the Vice President, he had been privy to many such arguments. Kane always felt like Simon had something else to say, something that struggled to use the rings of his throat as rungs on a step ladder.

"What is it that you think, Kane?"

Many of the younger Shinra's concerns made sense. About seventy percent of revenue came from products other than Drake Weapons. This number had started to rise since Gold had exhausted much of its materia resources. There were traders in Icicle willing to sell Gold exclusivity on muskets, Winchesters, and throwing knives. Kane could not tell whether the increased profit from selling the Drake Weapons to the Wuteng would make up for the loss in other sales. As for The President's attempt to innovate himself into the energy business—Leviathan supposedly only granted one miracle every one thousand years, and the Drake Weapons were enough.

"Whatever you think is best, President."

Simon turned a moment to twitch his mustache at Kane Tuetsi, stood, and smoothed out his suit. "I'm done here." He pushed his chair back in and followed out the door through which Kane had entered.

"Anything else?" President Shinra always asked Kane Tuetsi this question before dismissing him from his office.

"I wouldn't tell Mister Rolfe about Tinning's assignment. He's liable to over-react."

The President dragged on his cigar. Smoke came from his nose like moth pheromones, commanding Tuetsi's trust. "He'll find out eventually, but I won't tell him. The reason I sent you, to be truthful, is that I hoped getting to know you would make him hate your race less. We can't afford to have bipartisanship on this staff. You are dismissed, Doctor Tuetsi. Let me know if you make any progress in your research."

"Of course." Tuetsi bowed his head—a habit from Wuteng culture—and left the office.

It had not occurred to Kane Tuetsi until that moment that The President could have considered his race a boon in employing him.

* * *

Please take a moment to review. This chapter feels like an info dump to me, so any thoughts are appreciated.

Beta: Clan Dragoodle


	3. Chapter 2: Cosmo Memory

**Chapter 2: What Old Men Know**

"Hohoho, you want to know about me? My story's older than Shinra's. There was a tree planted the day I was born in a cave in Nibel Mountain. It's dead and dry as canyon wall. Hoho, I should know. I killed it."

-Johannes Bugenhagen, first Head of Science, Shinra Inc.,

* * *

Cosmo Canyon has built an entire culture on talking without saying anything. Every man speaks his mind, but you have to know the language. When Johannes Bugenhagen first arrived, he did so on invitation to teach. He found his students and his colleagues used the same words and linguistic constructs he did, but they put on airs, they trotted around the core of what they attempted to say, and they rarely looked him in the eye.

That last part arose from the fact that he had a specific status in the canyon as an elder who had lost his entire family. The canyon elders had invited him to teach for this reason, he discovered, but no one would speak to him outside his classes. They had placed him upon a pillar, pulling high through the light of the pyre. He thought this dried out husk of a man might burn alive.

Johann would call himself a man who liked his solitude, but the weeks he spent away from Nibelheim, away from his stuffy job where he did almost nothing, the check Lizveta Palmer gave him in hopes that someday that might change, were lonely, and he did not appreciate them. As such, he began to look forward to teaching, something he could say had never occurred before.

The classrooms were small. The furnishings consisted of rocks, scraped into cubes. Blackboards were precious and difficult to come by, but all the rock was red, as was the chalk, and so they were fashioned from the shale mines between Rudig and Nibel, then draped across the wall in jagged pieces that told as much of a story as the lesson plans themselves.

Lecture attendance seemed optional in the canyon. Boys who didn't show up went deep into the canyon to train with the canyon guardians as warriors or went to the Elders to pray at the Cosmo Candle all day. Johann could not discover what the latter accomplished, but this calling was portrayed as noble and worthwhile. Girls who did not show were seldom heard from, but Johann suspected they thrived somewhere, as children continued to grow in the canyon instead of crops or something else useful.

As such, Bugenhagen's lectures had a class list of fifteen or so, but about four showed up consistently, seven on a day where training was shut down in the caves because of Gi encroachment—a day like today.

"Professor Bugenhagen," the boy spoke before he raised his hand, "Bhatti says you know a great deal about the Gi."

Johann taught a lecture on energetics—coal, physics, combustion, lighting—but everyone who attended his lectures was more interested in the war brewing below the red rocks. Johann considered this understandable, since the men of the canyon didn't have furnaces or much at all to do with coal. Johann continued to wonder how the Candle stayed lit, but he did not think he could get an answer from the elders outside the simple word, "Faith."

And Johann did know a great deal about the Gi.

"I'm sure Bhatti has told you more than I can," Johann said.

"Bhatti has told us how to kill them," the boy continued, "but I want to know why they are here. Why do they continue to attack us through the tunnels? They say the war in the faraway lands between the Gold Nation and the sea people is over land. But what land do we have? They are welcome to the outlying planes. The rocks here keep us warm, provide protection, but that is not something the Gi would have. They are blind, and they do not want the air above ground."

"Your assessment of what the Gi might want," Johann said, "is human."

"And they are not?"

A girl next to the boy whispered at her lap and exchanged a glance with another girl behind her.

Johann ran his tongue over the brittle teeth, loose in his lower jaw. "Would you consider Bhatti and Seto human?"

The boy chewed his lower lip and worried the pencil between his knuckles.

"Yes," the girl beside him answered. "_I_ would."

"And why is that?"

"They speak, they want things, they reproduce, they're rational."

Johann chuckled. "But what is it that they want? They want to protect you, they want to give up their lives for the sake of red rocks and a fire that never goes out. They want to die for and train a people who look nothing at all like them. All of this when they could lose their newborn child, all of this when, instead, they could run away and survive on the land all their own, when their entire species, save themselves, has died for our people already. Does that sound like something rational to you? Is that something you could want?"

When no one in the classroom answered, Johann stifled a laugh and shook his head. His hand hurt to grip his cane, his ankles objected to the weight he put upon them, but he stood and stooped to lord his presence over his seven students. "The thing about humanity in this world," Johann said, "is that it is a loose term. It's a term we use to label other people we think are _like_ us, that we think we can understand. Don't ever presume that someone else in this world, whether they can speak, whether they look like you, whether they _seem_ rational, is human.

"The Gi," Johann continued, "have been imprisoned in the earth, away from sunlight, with only the mold and the creatures that live there for sustenance. Can you possibly know what they want?"

The boy in the front snapped his pencil. "Then how is it that you know so much about them, Professor Bugenhagen?"

"Many years ago, before the war between your people and the Gi began, I thought they might tell me something if I acted as a friend. So I would go to them. I spent weeks below the earth, eating and living like them as best I could, nursing depression and a host of bodily diseases. So you can say that I know more about them than almost anyone."

"Well, did they?" the boy said. "Did they give you what you wanted?"

"Hohoho," Johann shook his head and tottered back to his seat, keeping his back to the class. "I wonder, if they had, would I be wasting my time talking to a class that only asks questions irrelevant to the subject which I teach? The next thing I hear better be a solution to the force equation on the board, and we'll have no more questions about the Gi."

* * *

Nattack slid a torn card across the table, pushing dust. "This is the price," he said. "As an old friend, I know I can trust any promises you make me."

Johann rolled his eyes. He found this sense of airs and conspiracy unnecessary. It had been decades since he had been below ground, and he found the tunnels below Cosmo Canyon aggravated his rheumatism. Still, from what he could tell, Nattack had not changed. Johann possessed some certainty in the conviction that he had not the time to waste on frivolities. Dust silted from Nattack's headdress. Johann raised an eyebrow and lifted the corner of the card.

The glance proved unnecessary. Johann already knew what he would find.

"What possible use could you have for Seto?"

Nattack leaned back in his chair. Where the chair had come from, Johann could not say. He had the uncomfortable experience of accepting a fractured boulder as his seat. While Nattack sat, the caverns seemed to conform around him, molding against his back and providing support. It seemed that the men of Cosmo Canyon did not exaggerate when they claimed the Gi commanded the very rock around them.

During his time with the Gi, he had not been permitted into the deepest recesses of the caves. Johann wondered if air became shadows and shadows turned into rock so far below ground. He wondered how many people had seen the Gi in their natural habitats without a death sentence.

Johann had not told his students why the Gi attacked the cliff-dwellers of Cosmo Canyon because he did not know. They just did. The Elders said they were jealous of life and sunlight, but nothing about Johann's time with them could make him think this was the case. Johann had wondered if the invitation from Nattack might shed some insight, but only vaguely. He was here to learn the secrets of the bowels of the earth which the Gi supposedly possessed. After decades of persistence and an attempt to forge a relationship with the people below ground, Johann found it ironic that Nattack finally told him he had something worthy of exchange after he formed an alliance with their mortal enemies.

"We want to learn how he has outrun his own immortality."

So much for insight. Johann could not prevent the surfacing of jovial laughter.

Nattack's jaw set, jutting as if tearing through the air. Johann imagined he felt a pocket split and rush around his ears. "The secret is in his ability to die. The Canyon Beasts live long lives, yet they die eventually. We don't have the luxury."

"Then I suppose the bodies of those men wearing ridiculous headdresses are just figments of my imagination." The Gi, Johann thought, would probably give him what he wanted in riddles. He felt unsettled, alone in the dark with their chief. He wished he could regain the sharp sense he had formed living in the dark as a younger man. He moved his tongue over the gums in his mouth, circling his remaining teeth with regret.

Clearing his throat, Nattack fished into the pockets of his robes, producing a ring made from stone. "Do we have a deal?"

"What makes you think taking Seto captive will accomplish anything? Hohoho, if he is as fast as you say, he will slip through your fingers." Johann found this particular thought amusing.

When Nattack smiled, the black of his lips appeared to swallow his face. The headdress dipped low, and his eyes glowed yellow, creating visual solace in the dark. "If we can't learn from him, we will make him our own. Death is a privilege of the living."

Johann eyed the ring in Nattack's claws. If Seto died, that would leave Bhatti without a mate and Nanaki without a father. If the Gi took Seto into these caverns and allowed the sweat and cold of the stone to swallow him, there would only be two Canyon Beasts left in the world to protect the people of Cosmo Canyon.

Then, there was no guarantee Johann would understand the answers the Gi gave him. There was no way to be sure Nattack would even be capable of communicating the secrets of giving energy to the world.

"Very well," Johann said. "He's yours. Where's mine?"

* * *

One might argue that the plan Johann had devised achieved the greatest utility at the smallest cost. One might argue that the sealing of the Gi away forever served as more than enough incentive to sacrifice one of the precious Canyon Beasts.

Johann did not entertain the notion. He did it for purely selfish gain.

Bhatti knew it too.

The large red beast lounged in his office, preening her paws—the left missing one toe—and casting a stray eye toward Johann while he kneaded the pommel of his oak cane—the carved likeness of Schorai the Wicked—and scanned the map of the cavern. A passage under the observatory wound deep into the caves to what Nattack had called The Living Wall. Bugenhagen told Seito that he knew of a way to end the conflict between the Gi and the Canyon men, but it would require a distraction.

The male canyon beast had shaken out his headdress and said, "They could have me." As if it were his idea to begin with.

Bhatti cleared her throat, shaking out the fur over her ears and ending Bugenhagen's reflection of the deal he had made a week ago. "Tell me what you know about Cosmo Canyon, Bugenhagen," she said.

Bugenhagen looked up from the burnt sienna canvas and found himself incapable of stealing his gaze back from the thin hallways of her eyes. "It's a scholarly sanctuary with a flame that never falters. They hire old men from Gold to teach children about loss."

"I would think, since you discovered The Living Wall, you would at least know that this is where the humans fled to when they ran from The Calamity of the Sky," Bhatti said. "They rooted themselves and hid behind the sandstone while The Calamity destroyed The Ancients. There is a kind of energy in the North. Here, it is barren and cutoff. Twisted things breed in these caves."

Bhatti had a habit of giving long-winded lectures before she got to the point. It made her a bit like the Gi, though Johann doubted she would appreciate the comparison. Johann had decided long ago that it must have to do with the walls. They indeed sheltered all the Canyon's inhabitants from the outside world, and the only reason he kept any semblance of relatability whatsoever was that he didn't actually live in Cosmo Canyon. His mundane paper-pushing in Nibelheim kept him from checking out and learning to communicate through jovial laughter and vague hand gestures.

Johann decided to ignore her and returned to his map. "The Gi will lead an onslaught from inside the caves. They'll be mounting a full attack, as if intending to snake through the caverns and assault the canyon. If you cut across the East Wing, I believe that will be enough to use the charm and escape the fire before Living Wall closes in on them. You'll be running a risk—"

"A risk no larger than Seto's."

Then, all at once, she could be cold and exacting. Part of him felt a little jealous.

Johann pursed his lips. "I suppose that's the case." He fished into his pocket and removed the stone ring Nattack had given him. He kept the thin piece of shale guarded as he leaned to the ground and slid the ring across the floor.

His back, naturally, did not like that very much.

Bhatti nosed the charm but left it resting on the floor of Johann's office for a moment. "The humans here have hired you to teach because they believe that, if a man outlives his family, he gains profound insight. My people, on the other hand, feel that such a man has lost the most important insight of all. For then, he has nothing to lose." Bhatti licked her lips, sighed, scooped the charm up in her mouth, and loped out of the room.

* * *

Truth be told, the plan had flaws. Many potential loopholes and failures existed; the largest, of course, being that Johann had chosen to trust Gi Nattack. He wondered what would happen if the charm on Living Wall would fail to imprison the Gi or if Seto somehow escaped. Would he still receive his spoils? And if Nattack vanished behind Living Wall, _c__ould_ he?

Johann clutched at the sheet of shale in his front right pocket, smoothing it over with his thumb and listening for the drum signals. The people of Cosmo Canyon had an understanding of combustion few settlements possessed: the Gi in particular. Some claimed the canyon beasts could walk through it. Elders claimed they used the shadows in it as passages.

Johann did not wonder why the term "wisemen" had fallen out of favor.

Whatever the explanation, flooding the caverns with flame would give those who dwell above ground an advantage where the Gi of the caverns generally dominated. It would hold them off. Seto had been chosen to light the match—or, rather, drag his tail over gunpowder lines. Bhatti, supposedly, would go with him. In reality, she was supposed to follow, she was to watch, she was to break the charm Gi Nattack had given Johann and trap the entire tribe of Gi and Seto behind Living Wall.

Johann sipped his coffee and glanced at the clock hanging besides the Au Rete painting of a small woman with a bouquet of lavender. The blossoms clashed with her orange brooch, or so his daughter always told him. He wondered briefly what he would do were he to acquire a new painting. How would he analyze the pallet?

He did not think about the boom of drums which sent silt sifting from canyon wall, or the fire roaring below his feet. He did not imagine any of it; he sat in his plush chair—a little worn in the back, but still comfortable—

And took it as quite a shock when heat suddenly flashed across his face, singing his_ fur_.

Johann dropped his coffee, or he imagined he did back in his office before the alteration occurred. It counted as the last physical act he recalled before he could no longer move any part of his body. His forelimbs and back limbs moved on their own, his neck bowed low and barreled through fire. Johann could smell the flint, the gunpowder burning, the scent of singed hair all over his body. All the aches of old limbs vanished, and thick muscle coiled above and below joints, pulling him forward as he strove to reclaim equilibrium in his gut.

In exchange, he had entered an inferno. Everything he saw, he saw in gradations of red, but for the white heat of fire. A dull pressure bore at his temples. His eyes watered, not just from flame.

He was a canyon beast, but not just any canyon beast. Bhatti had possession of ancient magic. She understood fire and the way life flowed better than any living being Johann had ever met. He had thought she might also know the secret to powering the world, but had considered getting it from her would be even more impossible than getting it from Gi Nattack. She had used this magic to take Johann with her. He saw everything she did and felt everything she felt.

He wondered why, hoping she would hear it, but he received no answer.

Against Johann's will, vision drifted to Bhatti's paws, which flexed so that he could see that the leftmost toe had been clipped. They flexed again, scraping against the sandpaper of rock which felt strangely frigid, despite the fire, and then Bhatti's body drove forward, straight for a rift of firelight.

The fire scorched across her, diving in the wedges of her ribs, and Johann thought he had been thrust into oblivion by Bhatti's cruel desire for revenge, but the sheet of fire faded, and her paws slammed into the cool rock.

Bhatti stood on a ledge overlooking a wide gorge, throbbing as flame licked along crevices and set cross-sections aglow. Amidst it all, the cavern twisted with life, heaving and waving spears about. Canyon men stood out bright against the dull maroon of the rock, armed and waiting, unaware of any layer of Johann and Nattack's plan. The Gi blended such that the walls themselves seemed to heave and twitch. Johann suddenly remembered what Nattack had said about death being a privilege of the living.

_It is true_, said his next thought before Johann realized it had not been his thought at all.

In the back corner, the fire licked down toward Bhatti in a point, revealing another canyon beast as he leaped and sunk his teeth into the neck of what appeared to be a rock, but Johann knew better when he heard a gurgling howl from a member of the Gi. Seto had taken one down, licked his jowls, and galloped after another as the pressure behind Bhatti's eyes intensified, and her toes flexed once again.

_He won't survive this_. Something told Johann that Bhatti's reminder was more for her benefit than his.

For a moment, Johann felt Bhatti's body stiffen, as if preparing to pounce, but then the pressure in her temples increased, her stomach gripped something as cold as the rocks, and she fell back on her haunches, stiffened her shoulders, and followed Seto with her eyes as he shredded through the Gi.

Not many canyon men had entered the cavern. Only a few volunteers had willed themselves inside, knowing they would likely not make it back through the walls of fire. This excursion had only one intended survivor, and Johann found himself experiencing everything as she did.

Flame barely reached the ledge. Tears did not fall, though they threatened. Ears perked to catch the rumble of drums. Rock itself swallowed bodies, and the lighter red of the canyon residents dimmed. Death bred below the walls.

A spear lanced Seto's side, and Bhatti's flanks twitched in sympathy. She chewed pieces of the ringed charm Johan had given her, her mouth rolling through the sponge texture of pumice. Then a flash of Nanaki captured her thoughts, forced into Johann's sentiments: pink and new, sprawled outside Cosmo Canyon, twitching his flame-tipped tail in the grass as he yawned.

One of the canyon men yowled as three spears from the Gi drove into his neck, and blood spurted, coloring the stone a still-brighter color than dull maroon. Bhatti's jaw clenched, and Johann imagined the sensation of flesh rushing through teeth, blood oiling gums, as if he had experienced it clearly many times before.

Then, as they had planned, Seto howled low, setting his head back so that his snout faced the roof of the caverns. His back legs drew him toward Living Wall, and the Gi formed a funnel around him, squeezing him to the back, standing in front of the fire and preventing escape.

Some men from above ground remained, fleeing at the sound, trying to find gaps in the flame and rock as they ran. The drums grew louder, thudding through Seto's howl. The music of it all thinned Living Wall as it shuddered into a sheet and faded.

Through the wall, Nattack appeared. Grasses hung from his shoulders like a cape. The vibrissae of his headdress scraped the stalactites. He raised his red spear high and howled along with Seto. His call sounded more like the roar of a near-dormant volcano.

As Seto heard it, he froze for a moment. Again, Johann felt Bhatti's flanks twitch. Then Seto spun on his haunches and tore along the stone floor.

The caverns erupted in more screams, drowning out the drums and the crackle of fire, as the rock itself seemed to rise up and follow the wisp of Seto through living wall, lobbing their spears.

Bhatti could not resist the temptation and leapt after the straggles, tearing through them with her fangs. Johann found himself terrified that he enjoyed the sensation of slashing flesh, even as it tasted of dirt. He resented Bhatti for biting into the gullet and ending the struggles too early.

Air thickened. The cavern grew tight, and Johann realized Bhatti had positioned herself in the opening of Living Wall. Johann pleaded for her feet to take her back through, but the body remained rigid, watching Nattack stand tall and prepare to throw his great lance...

_Leave him!_ Johann finally managed to communicate a thought of his own.

_I can't._

That last sensation, the feeling that Bhatti would rather the walls close in around her than back up and leave Seto behind, stuck, and Johann thought he would not be surprised to find tears crusted on his human cheeks, back in his office. In that moment, he loved Seto and Nanaki as _his_ family. He realized that it was this moment that Bhatti had wanted him to experience.

The last adult canyon beast did not cry. The back legs drew the animal back through the sheet of Living Wall as Nattack lobbed his lance. Sorrow flowed so strongly that any sense of intrusion ebbed away as Johann, nearly 100 years old and a victim of such continuous loss, was swept along with it.

It wasn't just loss.

He had received that hand-written missive from Private Heidegger. Friends of the dead notified the living because Gold Nation could not be bothered with trivialities in a pursuit of land. Johann had opened it. He had felt more in his arthritic fingers than in his chest.

The image of Nanaki again, falling asleep in the open with no one to watch over him—no one needed to watch over him. His father and mother had seen to that when they agreed to Johann's deal. Bhatti had not agreed to sacrifice her mate for the sake of the people of Cosmo Canyon either, and she could only face his son if she promised she would fight for them in the future.

Betrayal is a kind of loyalty.

* * *

Back in his office, Johann clenched his thumb into the thin center of the shale. It snapped in twain, and the image of the cave outside Living Wall appeared. Without the shades of red covering his vision, he could no longer see the sweat of the rock, but a green wraith wove through the cavern, growing thicker and spinning into a sphere that swelled to fill the cave.

The sphere turned blue and green, and Johann recognized it as a likeness of The Planet. He could spot The Wildlands, Icicle, the continent where Gold Nation and Cosmo Canyon resided, the empire of Wutai. A tiny human figure formed next to a miniature tree at its top for a brief moment before they both dissolved into colored light, dispersing in lines over the model to other points and forming images of animals. He could see a canyon beast, birds, even a bhaba velamyu with a briefly flicking purple stinger protruding from its back. They began to form quickly and sporadically all over the globe before dissolving into reds, blues, yellows, and traveling to other points.

After several moments of this light show, a swell of light formed over Nibelheim and burst, as if from a hole in the earth, drawing green lines all over the globe. Houses sprouted along the lines, bright light flooding through the windows as if each contained its own Cosmo Candle.

Gi Nattack had kept his promise. Johann knew how to power the entire world.

His chest ached as the image in his office dissolved. He gulped in air and shivered. Even though the charm had expired, Johann felt Seto's loss clenched in his chest, and Johann very suddenly didn't care about the unharnessed energy flowing through The Planet. Bhatti had cursed him into caring.

Johann thought of Nanaki, curled in the caves somewhere, likely napping, and wondered if he could face him.

When a man has nothing to lose, logic is easier to come by. Bhatti could only face her son if she promised to pledge her life for the people of Cosmo Canyon the same way his father had, looking forward.

Perhaps Johann could if he took his blood spoils with him to his grave.

* * *

_Eh, it's better. We'll go with it for now._


	4. Chapter 3: Language Barrier

**Chapter 3: Language Barrier**

"It's loudest when no one speaks. There's one thing in the whole world that humans are better at than any other species, and it's shutting everything else up."

—Erda Tinning, Head of PR, Shinra Manufacturing Works

* * *

_I am disappointed in you. You let these creatures dig up my insides and use them to decorate cakes and siding. You participate in debauchery, egging them on in this madness. Soon, there will be nothing left of me, and when there is nothing left of me, you can be sure—_

Erda smacked down her empty sake glass, licked her lips, and stared out the cafe window at a vendor in a blue hat, hocking long strips of Adamantaimai flesh. Maybe that's what she needed: something bloody and sticky to knock the talk out of Gaea.

She thought it might be quieter here, away from the energy pooling around the sore in Icicle. As luck would have it, a pole existed in Wutai as well. The Planet's energy massed there, forcing trees through solid rock like pickaxes. Sake became the next best thing. It would leave her nice and lubricated for her meeting with the gods of the Pagoda.

Erda hoped she stumbled. She hoped she remembered their faces afterward-not for any practical purpose beyond reliving false affront.

She pretended to stare at the tank full of Kulloshi—bottom feeder fish with pushed in snouts that didn't look pretty enough to be put on display—as a man in white taffeta—yes, taffeta, something only women wore in Icicle—traipsed his way up the walk. The bell chimed as the door opened. A portly hostess rustled forward and nearly ripped the man's shoes off, she bent so low to kiss them. He shifted his weight, and the wood creaked. Erda managed to get a clear shot of his backside out her peripheral when the shift strained his leggings.

Not bad. Really.

"Lord Qufu." The hostess bowed again. "Would you care for a table?"

Qufu scanned the room. Erda hoped he caught the doilies with Gifu's face stenciled on them that hung so proudly from the ceiling! What better way to profess undying devotion to one's country than with doilies? He would not recognize Erda, and she felt curious how long it might take him to realize who represented the liaison from Shinra. For one thing, she did not wear red. Her business suit blended in with the wood.

Architecture in Wutai had a certain elegance. Lord Gifu advocated building for efficiency over adornment. The town, outside, appeared bleak but for the occasional lotus. Across the ponds, Wutai had a reputation for atmosphere, religious worship, and strong roots. Gifu could have capitalized on this, but he did not want to sacrifice production for tourism. Erda admired him, the architects who built ranch houses over skyscrapers, waiters who remembered to shake and warm her sake, and whoever strung those Hanadama Pearl necklaces they imported to E Street back North.

"Ms. Tinning?"

Erda grunted as Qufu approached and poured herself another cup of sake. She downed it with both hands.

Sour. Needs heat.

"I am Lord Qufu, the Foreign Trade Minister under Lord Gifu."

Bourbon. That certainly had heat. Perhaps Erda could get herself a nice snifter. She had heard Mideel is known for its_ whiskey_, but she hoped that did not preclude good bourbon distilleries in the capital of Wutai. Often, she found that they did not go hand in hand.

Erda raised a finger and beckoned the waiter.

"He sent me here because I have reviewed your terms."

"Did His Lordship review them?" Erda did not bother to look up as the waiter, upon recognizing Erda's companion, nearly dropped his clipboard in the struggle to reach her table.

Finally, some actual service in this place.

"I—" Qufu started.

Erda addressed the waiter. "Yes, _you_, could I get a glass of Cordine? Yes, that's fine."

Even without looking up, Erda could tell Qufu had shifted his weight again. "Ms. Tinning—"

"Oh, Chao's Blessing, _sit down_."

Qufu pursed his lips, and Tinning got a good look at his face for the first time. Tan on his cheeks drew thick lines down to his chin. For a Minister, he managed to find his way outside often. Poor thing.

"I would rather not," he said.

Erda leaned forward and raised her brow. The table she sat at wobbled. "Have you come to meet me and negotiate terms over lunch, or haven't you?"

"That's just it, Miss Tinning, I haven't. Lord Gifu sent me to tell you he finds your terms beyond negotiation. He feels insulted and asks that you return to Icicle."

Erda fell back into her chair, feigning outrage with a scowl. She expected this, of course.

At that moment, the waiter returned, sporting a tin tray with a yellow label bottle of Cordine Bourbon and a small glass. He poured her drink with a shaking hand.

"Thank you, and would you mind an extra glass for my friend? Leave the bottle, please."

"Don't bother," Qufu began. "I'm—"

"Please," Erda repeated to the waiter.

The waiter took any excuse he could to scuttle back to the kitchen.

Erda returned her attention to Qufu. He remained standing over her table, his arms crossed.

"Sit," she said. "The drink is my treat."

Reluctantly, Qufu pulled out the chair across from Erda. The legs groaned against the wood. As soon as he sat down, he recrossed his arms. Erda thought him rather humorous. He kept his scowl so well. Perhaps she could get a copy of him fashioned of pewter for her desk. He would make a charming paperweight.

"Now," Erda said, leaning forward once more. She braced her hands against the table. The cool of the dead wood bit her fingers. "I will tell you a secret. I also have a boss."

Qufu met her gaze and did not take outward offense. She would give him that. "I know."

"Do you?" Erda took a swig from her bourbon and let the heat burn down her throat. Her lips felt numb a moment, then warm as the blood returned. The taste was awful, but she only cared for the heat. "Seeing as our situations are similar, your refusal to answer my offer without a counter or an explanation almost ensures that I'm out of a job. Through, shall we say, no fault of my own. Only an unreasonable employer who would shuttle his employees around the world on a freighter with hordes of underfed stray cats, boxes of scrap metal, and insults to fling at esteemed dignitaries. What would you say had Lord Gifu been the crazy one?"

"My brother—"

"Your brother?" Erda licked her lips. "Now I can see why you're so upset. If someone would bandy around with my brother's dignity, I would think I'd be at least as put off."

"You have a brother?"

"Of course," Erda said. "Why wouldn't I have a brother?"

Aside from the fact that she didn't.

"The background check your company forwarded said you haven't listed a next of kin."

Erda still remembered the arrival of The Calamity, the dark-skinned man rising from the crater who kissed Lista's mother on the cheek and slowly let his poison seep into the ground. Erda's parents came down with consumption; their skin flaked off in thick chunks.

"I'm-estranged from my family. That doesn't mean, of course, that I wouldn't take it upon myself to defend my brother's honor. Does it?"

Qufu swallowed.

Erda gripped the edge of the table with her empty hand and let the wood bite harder. "Just give me a chance to get a full report to my employer. After all, it isn't _my_ offer on the table; it's his."

It was her offer, but it was for Jonathan Shinra's benefit. Half lies could be a sort of liscensial freedom.

"I don't think that's practical."

Erda Tinning leaned even further forward so that she could smell Qufu's breath. He smelled of eel. He had already had lunch. She felt cheated somehow.

"Will you make a lady beg, My Lord?"

Of course, this question of sexual distinction would not translate to the culture of Wutai, where men wore taffeta.

Qufu cleared his throat. "I will speak with my brother on this." He stood, and Erda thought it might simply be to recreate the gap between the two of them.

Erda slid from the table and grabbed her glass and the bottle of bourbon. At that moment, the waiter returned and nearly dropped the extra glass he had fetched for Lord Qufu.

Just as disgruntled as the waiter, Qufu crossed his arms. "I advise you return to your hotel, Ms. Tinning."

She slipped the glass from the waiter's hands and wrangled her hip in his general direction. "You'll find a 500 gil note in my pocket. Yes, yes that's it. Don't be shy."

As the waiter took his pay from Erda's front pocket, his cheeks stained red, Qufu began striding purposefully toward the door.

"Thank you very much. Lovely service. Yes, yes." Erda blew a tuft of hair that had fallen into her eyes—she would need to adjust her bun—and trotted after Qufu, still holding the bourbon and the two glasses tinkling in her right hand.

"Ms. Tinning—"

"Nonsense, I'm coming with you. I believe we've discovered that my appeals are slightly more effective, wouldn't you say?" As she walked, Tinning attempted to refill her glass of bourbon, sloshing some onto the ground.

Qufu chewed his lip and pretended not to watch her, but she caught a nearly black iris darting her way. She wondered if people with irises indistinguishable from their pupils saw the world a bit more darkly than others. Maybe it was like never having to buy sunglasses. She thought about asking, but she didn't want to push too hard. Even she had some restraint.

_You have none. You have no restraint whatsoever. You are just like the rest of them, leaking your confections on me, tilling my land, and slowly letting me die._

Gaea had always been a real charmer. Tongue. Like. Champagne. Erda poured her a few more drops of bourbon, drawing a dotted smile from spilled liquor in the clay of Wutai.

As Erda began to guzzle bourbon from the bottle in a true display of class, she let her eyes rove. The official banner of Wutai displayed a red Leviathan stitched on white. Though built practically, usually in squares with staunch wood beams in all four corners, no patriot could resist the red garnish, often snaking around the gutters. The citizens of Wutai believed Leviathan shed rain through clouds in the sky in order to protect his people from evil with fog and chill. Perhaps gutters existed for when Leviathan got confused and believed the people of Wutai were under attack from the foundations of their own homes.

Speaking of fog, a sprinkle of it appeared across Erda's vision quite suddenly. She decided to recap her bottle of bourbon.

When Qufu and Erda approached the Great Pagoda, the texture of Wutai changed completely. Everything appeared to be made of blown stone-that is, as if one could use the blown glass technique to create smooth, winding stone structures. A fountain of Leviathan sat in the square, wrapped around a globe and streaming water from its mouth over Northern Continent. That was a depiction Erda could get behind: a god who spat upon the world.

The Pagoda itself remained a relic of the old, airy, spiritually inspired Wutai. Perhaps the capital building alone was to blame for Wutai's continued staunch reputation. Walls of paper, slanted wooden staircases, and sprawling filigree stretching like arms from the roof. Qufu shuffled nervously at the entrance, as if Erda might attempt to burst through the door before he thought of a proper explanation for her presence. To her credit, she leaned against the wall and remained silent a moment, marveling at how something that appeared to be made of paper could sustain her. After all, the drinking certainly packed in the calories.

When Qufu finally knocked upon the front door, Erda heard scrambling follow immediately, then several thuds as if someone had fallen rather than run down the stairs. A smack, then the wobbling of something heavy. A high pitched grunt.

"Lord Godo, please allow the secretary—"

The door swung open, and a boy nearly fell out of the foyer and down another set of stairs. Erda liked him immediately.

"Uncle Qufu," the boy said, all hair no face. His smile shrunk into a period at the end of an unsaid sentence when he spotted Erda. "Who is she?"

"The liaison from Shinra." Lord Qufu acknowledged the boy with a mere flicker of his gaze, then strained to look through the opening to the Pagoda.

"I thought Pops said Shinra was a den of wrinkled old men using sticks to toss weak sparks."

Ramuh, Leviathan's ancient enemy. Erda felt proud that her offer had inspired such a belittling comparison. She found it rather apt, imagining Jonathan Shinra and the flare at the end of his fat cigar.

"It's become difficult to send her away."

"Why? Just tell her to scram. Seems like a lush to me anyway."

Erda beamed. "Is this the heir?"

Qufu chewed the inside of his cheeks. "He is."

"Not much in the way of deference."

"He'll learn it."

"Who said he needs to?" Erda fingered the cap to her bottle of bourbon and stared at the boy. He stared back unflinchingly. "There's a reason you can find 'sham' in the word 'shame.'"

"That may be the language of your people," Qufu said, "but it isn't ours."

Erda decided that, should she correct him, they might send her back to Icicle in a crate marked "Organic Sample."

"Godo, would you fetch Lisel?"

"Why should I? I can announce you."

"You shouldn't have to."

"But I'm here, Old Man." Godo huffed. "I never get to do anything."

Was he serious? Erda stared at the dark Cordine, watching it swill and spin through the glass. How old was this boy—twelve? She wondered if the barricade of royalty functioned as a time freeze. A boy does not get exposed to anything contrary. He never grows up. She wondered what Gifu might be like, sitting in a high chair, shaking his rattle, and chewing tea leaves. That could make her plans more difficult. Logic was a predictable adversary. Irrational children made terrifying opponents.

"Lisel," Qufu insisted, "please."

Godo's chin dropped. He chipped at the floor with a bare foot and spun back in the direction from which he had come.

The decor of the foyer had an understated lavishness to it. Sure, bare floors spoke of a lack of possessions, but they also suggested time and freedom to keep them clean, to keep dust from the corners and surfaces slick. Erda never had time or enough Sno to keep her house clean. Spotless floors could be luxuries just as much as gold-trimmed satin love seats.

In moments, Lisel, a rotund woman with something of a mustache, tottered downstairs and beckoned the two of them to follow her. Erda barely paid attention to what she said or to her gestures as she followed the incline with her eyes. Each floor had the same sense of deserted luxury. As if the Pagoda were a museum instead of a capital building. No one lived here; any business conducted left only ghost traces with an altogether elevated sense of importance. If someone bled, the floors were re-paneled. The gods of the Pagoda, about whom many songs and stories had been spun, were only phantoms. She would soon encounter one of them.

Lord Gifu sat cross-legged in the center of the top floor in an overly-ceremonial beaded robe with Leviathan embroidered around the collar. He kept his hands folded in the sleeves and cultivated a long, pointed beard. It suddenly seemed to Erda that Gifu himself must represent the last relic of the old stories, as stolid as the carving of Da Chao on the mountain face. The boy, Godo, sat behind him, staring at his fists folded in his lap. He said nothing, but Erda caught him biting his lower lip.

"Lord Qufu," said Lisel, swinging her arm over-zealously, "and Miss Erda Tinning of Shinra Manufacturing Works."

Lord Gifu gave no indication that he felt surprised to see her. "Thank you, Lisel."

Lisel bowed low and retreated back through the doorway.

"Miss Tinning," Lord Gifu cleared his throat. "Please tell me. What may I do for you?"

Without any introduction or request, Erda plopped down across from Lord Gifu, leaving a foot to separate them. She placed the bottle of liquor in the center of the space. "Your country," she said, "makes terrible bourbon."

Lord Qufu cleared his throat. Gifu waited for her to continue.

"And that's just fine. No one comes to Wutai for bourbon, do they? They go to Mideel for Mideech Whiskey, yes, but they never come to Wutai for bourbon. If a customer wants the good stuff, you can import it. That will make the price higher for your customers, but as long as they're willing to buy it, there's no problem."

Lord Gifu, guessing the direction of the discussion, returned her conversation. "The price difference in the offer you have given us for the Drake Weapons accounts for more than export fees. Your company charges Gold less for the same product, and we don't trade with those who claim neutrality and favor our enemy."

"Who said that I was talking about export fees on weaponry? I was merely opening with that to point out that Drake Weapons are absolutely _not_ like bourbon or whiskey. You can't afford the cheap stuff."

"Excuse me?"

"You can't afford to buy cheap weapons in this war, Lord Gifu—can I drop the title? Is your Lordliness implied?"

"Miss Tinning—"

"Because if it's just the same to you, I'd prefer to call you Gifu, or just Fu even, but that might trouble your brother, Qufu."

Lord Gifu licked his lips and said nothing, guessing correctly that she would continue to change the subject if he insisted upon speaking.

"I understand that you have yet to even see a Drake Weapon, but I'm sure you have been in communication with someone in the Wild Lands, else you would not have petitioned Shinra Manufacturing Works for their use. I can assure you, as can this man, that without them, you will lose."

"We will lose anyway," Gifu said. "Consider the price. If you charge us more, we can afford fewer of these miracles, and Gold has had a head start in snatching up the required resources for them to function. As we are already behind in this war, thanks to your pre-existing agreement with our enemy, we are sure to lose. We would rather fall with dignity."

"Is that what you will tell parentless children? There's a difference between decimation and loss."

"Children are strong in this country."

Erda's vision flickered to Godo in the corner. He had not stirred. "Are they?"

Gifu followed her eyes. As he turned to look at his son as well, the beads hanging from his sleeves stirred, drawing tail-biting snakes in the air as they dangled.

"Lord Godo, do you feel you are strong?" Erda asked.

"I'm not a child," Lord Godo insisted.

"The question stands."

Godo looked nervously to his father, who nodded.

"I think so."

"In your strong opinion," Erda continued, tilting the bottle of bourbon along the rim on the floor and listening to the groan of the glass, "is your father giving up too easily?"

Qufu opened his mouth to speak, but Gifu silenced him with a finger.

"Yes," Godo said. "He's being a dolt. He doesn't know anything. If he has a problem with your price, he should argue with it instead of sending you away. I heard all kinds of stories about Wild Lands! Giant birds and Leviathan is there. If the Drake Weapons are strong enough to fight Leviathan himself, we get them. Right?"

The rest of the room grew silent. The cleanliness of the top floor seemed to stifle, bringing heat with it. Or perhaps it was the bourbon.

"What if such an opinion made you weak?" Erda asked at last.

Godo's chin fell. "I'm not weak."

"If it did, just the same?"

"Then I'd be weak."

Erda let go of the bottle of Cordine. It groaned on the wood, spinning on its rim less and less until it came to a stop standing once more directly between Erda and Lord Gifu.

"If you thought you were fighting a battle you could not win," Erda said, "you would already have surrendered."

Lord Gifu gave a small smile, but otherwise did not move. Wutai's style of martial arts, Erda knew, had the philosophy of keeping complete muscle control: always knowing what your hands, what your arms, what your head is doing at any moment and being able to force a specific movement. Erda didn't think she could manage that; she was an ant, not a hive.

"And if you're stupid enough to think you can win without Shinra-"

"Please get out," Gifu said.

"Excuse me?" Erda lifted her bottle of Cordine and unscrewed the cap.

"I said, 'please leave my country,'" Lord Gifu repeated. "I did you the courtesy of listening to your arguments, and now I would like you to leave. Regardless of whether or not you think of yourselves in this way, you have cast your lot in with my enemy. I have no need of any allies of Gold Nation on my shores."

"If I would sell you Drake Weapons at a higher price"—Erda recapped her drink—"I would sell you defective Drake Weapons at a higher price."

"Then you understand."

"Lord Gifu," Erda said—and when she did, she feigned boredom—"I assure you, Shinra Manufacturing Works is only in the business of making money."

"That is precisely why I cannot trust you, Miss Tinning. You see, we are in the business of fighting wars. If your company realizes it, it will be more successful."

Erda beamed and extended her hand.

Gifu did not take it.

"Very well, Lord Gifu. I have only one simple request, in that case."

"If it will get you to leave," Lord Qufu said, "we will be happy to oblige."

Erda grinned wider still. Lord Qufu had dropped his deference.

"I would like Lord Godo to give me a tour of Da Chao."

"Miss Tinning—"

Lord Gifu cut his brother off. "I do not have an objection. As long as you are gone by nightfall. Lord Godo knows his way around the terrain, and it would do him some good to see the face of Da Chao."

Lord Qufu fumed. Lord Godo stared fixedly at his feet.

Erda still had not lowered her shaking hand.

* * *

Rough, thick-soled boots on dirt always gave Erda the same aching sense as eating hard candy with gel centers. She swallowed quickly to avoid the too-sweet syrup in the center and choked on it. If she just took off her boots, she could field the condemnation for the sense of salve, the cooling on the bristled pads of her toes. As Erda and Godo climbed Da Chao, the Sun wriggled free from its perch in the sky, leaving shuddering splatters over wiry bonsais. Shadows lengthened under Da Chao's lips so that his face became as serious and self-righteous as Qufu's.

"My father is unhappy with me." Godo kicked at a stone. It skittered along the walk and tumbled down the face of the mountain.

"That much is clear," Erda said, "but I find his choice of punishment odd."

"It isn't a punishment." Godo rolled his eyes. "If I see you beside the face of God, your arguments will seem small."

_I know you hear me, Erda. Stop pretending you don't._

"Lovely!" By this point, Erda had lost her bottle of Cordine; she doubted the keepers of the mountain would look kindly upon this bout of absentmindedness. She still had one of the glasses, however, and she raised it, empty, toward the decaying sunlight. "That is precisely the sort of elegant nothing I need to win negotiations."

They continued along the stomach of the mountain, treading steadily over brittle branches toward the god's palm.

"Why is Shinra asking my pops to pay more for the Drake Weapons than Gold?"

"Because, that way, he won't pay for them."

_Why aren't you—_

Godo flushed, his eyes narrowing. "So you _are_ siding with Gold, and you don't want Wutai to have them."

"It has nothing to do with that." Erda waved the glass dismissively. "It's merely a basic mathematical principle. There's no real maximum price your father will pay for the Drake Weapons. If I ask for an amount just a little bit more than shipping plus the price Gold is paying, that will still seem reasonable, since the true amount of shipping and preparation is unclear. As such, any price he accepts, it is safe to assume that we could have charged him just a little bit more, and we're losing possible potential profit. The only solution is to demand a price so outrageous he'll never accept."

"That's stupid."

"Indeed." Erda raised her glass to her lips only to find it empty. She frowned and lowered it again.

"So why do anything?"

"My dear boy," Erda said, sighing, "your father doesn't want the Drake Weapons. If he did, he would have paid. No matter what we asked, he would have paid, even if he had to sell the mountain upon which we're standing. If I had asked him for a price less than what Gold is paying, he would have accepted it and regretted it. Your father is right; Wutai is going to lose this war. It is the mere unfortunate result of the fact that Gold bought the Drake Weapons from us first. They have gained too much ground. Lord Gifu is attempting to hold his forces for as long as he can and minimize his losses. If he buys the Drake Weapons now, at any price, the war will last longer. He will lose more men and possibly more land as the fighting continues."

"I don't think that's—"

"It is."

Godo chewed his lip thoughtfully and continued to lead Erda up the incline of Da Chao while the Planet's whining thrummed in her ears. At length, he paused and turned to her. "Why do you care?"

They had reached the palm of Da Chao. The top of the Pagoda barely pierced the sunset, leaking orange over the remains of Linking Logs Wutai. Branches jutted out from trees, matted like ill-groomed bandersnatches. Erda reached for tiny needles, and the stub of a branch flaked off in her palm.

"It is in the best interest of Shinra Manufacturing Works that Wutai stay strong in the future."

"What makes you think my pops would buy your weapons even then?"

"Because he's smart. You should listen to him."

Godo crossed his arms. "I think he's a fool to just roll over like this. There has to be something we can do."

Erda guffawed. She remembered when The Calamity came. It got one foot in the door to their world, cut her people off from each other and The Planet, gave them their own thoughts: just that much was enough. The ones who rolled over became human and built giant empires capable of catching the sky! The ones who fought and clung to the voice of their old consciousness then downed bourbon to quiet that same voice now.

"Pride," Erda said, "is fake. Man's greatest strength is his ability to feel free when he should be embarrassed. If you can't manage that, pray you will never find yourself in a situation similar to your father's."

Lord Godo shuffled his feet. He made nets over his hands with his sleeves and stared back the way they had come. It was clear he thought her a fool and had grown bored of her lecturing. "Are you ready to go back yet? You have to be gone by the time it's dark, right?"

Erda shook her head. "I'll stay a while, but please feel free to return. Don't worry. I assure you I can find my way home." She raised the empty glass after Godo as he skipped down the mountain.

That left Erda alone with the face of Da Chao. Then there was no putting it off any longer.

Erda had thought it would be easier to stand up to The Planet if she could use a face as a front. It made Her human, like Shinra, like Lord Qufu; Erda could easily make a fool of herself in front of humans.

"I've left you behind," Erda told The Planet. "If you will ask something of me, ask it of Ifalna instead. I'm not human. I'll never be human, but you might as well think of me as one."

As always, The Planet ignored her pleas.

_It's coming again. I need you._

Erda ignored The Planet in turn.

* * *

Please review if you have a moment. I'm working diligently on a rewrite of Chapter 3, but I thought I'd throw this up in the mean time.


	5. Chapter 4: The Excavation of C Drake

_As a short geography note, I'm assuming The Sleeping Forest used to extend out the other entrance to Forgotten City: on the expanse between the caves and Icicle Inn. For the purpose of this chapter, assume it was excavated away by Shinra._

_Also, please note that the Bugenhagen chapter, chapter 2, has been altered to include a new scene at the beginning and fill out existing scenes._

* * *

**Chapter 4: The Excavation of Catherine Drake**

"People always think it's the big things that change everything, but they're wrong. There's always a splash that sends you home to change your petticoat first. On the way back, you get run over. You know what happened to me my first day at Shinra Manufacturing Works? I broke through a thin layer of ice outside the front door, slipped, and got water all over my dress. You know what I didn't do? Go home."

-Catherine Drake, last Head of Development under Shinra Manufacturing Works, first Head of Weapons Development under Shinra Inc.,

* * *

"Doctor Tuesti, your pupil is making a general mess of my laboratory again."

"I can't control what Faremis does." Kane smoothed his mustache over his lips. "I told him to work on a proposal. There's no reason for him to be in your laboratory."

"He said yours was too cluttered, and he needed to make a place for something big."

"Something big?"

Kane Tuesti, to Catherine Drake, appeared too fragile. The gods of Wutai had made him from rusted metal instead of the normal human stuff. Catherine avoided confrontation with him for his own protection.

That did not mean that it did not exasperate her when Kane Tuesti seemed indifferent to the mechanisms propelling his own research. His primary toy, Gast Faremis, considered himself a boy genius with a rock tumbler and an ant farm. The Shinra labs became his playground. Never mind that Jonathan Shinra had given Kane and his assistant full reign over the excavation site in the forest just below the mountains, or the plot and the shed on university grounds. Never mind that they only managed to accomplish simple translation work, let alone their main objective. For some reason, Gast Faremis needed a hidey hole in Catherine the Great's laboratory.

"Ask him yourself." Drake dropped a pile of work request forms on Tuesti's shanty of a desk—put together by golf club irons and panels from test tube crates—watching it shake. "If he won't write a proposal, at least have him file these with my secretary."

Kane crossed his arms. Everything the man did seemed to take twice as long as it would anyone else, so Drake had a moment to dig her heels into his dirty linoleum floor. As far as offices went, the Vice President's had little: a steel-framed photograph of his wife—the woman wore too little makeup and would look better with her hair down—his doctoral diploma hanging crooked on the wall, and a small coal stove in the corner for heat and preparing tea. It functioned more as a greenhouse with small lamps and troughs of vegetation. Tuesti seemed partial to legumes and roots. Drake could barely move around inside the space without feeling like a baked potato.

"I don't see why he doesn't have ample space at the University."

"Does Jonathan pay you a VP's salary to tell me things I've already considered?" Catherine licked her lips. "I need to prepare for the move to Nibelheim soon, but instead I'm dealing with Administrative issues in a department I neither have faith nor part in. I told The President over and over again that hiring a chivy would only leave—"

Tuesti cleared his throat. He seemed tolerant of racial jabs from anyone but Catherine Drake, which delighted her immensely. She could feel the fading rose color—staunched out during the baking process—coming back to her cheeks.

Then the door to Tuesti's office opened. Drake found this surprising, not least because she could not imagine a reason why anyone would have a desire to come into Kane's office. She became even more surprised when she turned around to spot several of the excavators from the Shinra dig site covered in sweat and dirt, mopping their foreheads. One still wore his hardhat and held fast to a Legendary Hammer, which he hung over his left shoulder. As if he were bored. The nerve.

"We need your authorization for the trolley, Doctor," the man with the hammer said.

Catherine narrowed her eyes. "What for?"

Another excavator cleared his throat. "We meant Doctor Tuesti."

Her lips pursed involuntarily.

Kane raised an eyebrow—in the same, excruciatingly slow way he did everything—and stood from his seat, keeping his arms crossed. "Her question is my question."

She certainly didn't need him validating _her_.

"Professor Gast wants to move the new specimen to the Drake Labs for your project, Doctor."

Catherine cleared her throat, feeling the returning rouge begin to dominate the remaining pores of her face. "If anyone is transporting anything to the Drake Labs, I would think—"

"Excuse me a moment, Doctor Drake." Kane side-stepped his desk and the Head of Weapons Development in one movement and wove past the excavators. The door to his office crashed behind him.

Catherine Drake, not to be brushed off so easily, clacked after Kane as quickly as her heels would allow. "Where do you think you're going? Excuse me, Doctor Drake! Excuse me, indeed. If it weren't for me, you wouldn't _have_ a job."

As Kane Tuesti proceeded to the elevator, continuing to ignore Catherine Drake, the door opened, and Professor Gast spilled out, dirt over his white lab coat and grease in his mustache, precisely as he had been when Catherine had seen him hours earlier. He pushed his glasses up, over-large knuckles straining under the skin on his fingers.

"Doctor Tuesti, Doctor Drake." Whenever Gast greeted someone, he seemed genuinely happy to see them. This annoyed Catherine because she never felt happy to see anyone and could see the obvious value in possessing Gast's disposition over her own. "I was looking for both of you. You have to follow me. I assume you gave the excavators permission to use the trolley?"

"Faremis, what's going on?" Kane sounded hollow, as if he had just learned that his wife had died.

"It's brilliant, Doctor Tuesti," he said, "I think I found the answer to our problem of sustaining biological mechanics."

"What problem—"

The stumbling feet of the excavators approached behind them. Catherine turned to see a distressed expression distorting the face of the man in the hard hat.

"You didn't authorize the use of the trolley yet?" Catherine turned back to see that Gast's face had fallen.

Catherine cleared her throat. "Why are you moving it to the Drake Labs?"

Gast's facial expression cleared as if he had just been vindicated. Of course Kane Tuesti had faith in him. It was only Doctor Drake's reservations about her facilities. She rolled her eyes, not caring whether he caught it or not.

"It's just that no one else but Shinra can learn of this discovery. University eyes can't possibly be privy…"

"Yes, but _what is it_?" Catherine demanded, feeling a vice tug up between her breasts and around her throat. She suddenly had a very terrifying feeling—that someone else's work might become more important, that her supremacy over Shinra's research could be something so easily overthrown. Why hadn't the fuss died in Tuesti's office, where it belonged with the carrots and beans?

"I've found one," Gast said. "I've found an Ancient."

* * *

The subsequent ordeal had lifted Doctor Drake's spirits, at least. The Foreman—the one with the hammer—had made a show of using white tarps to hoist the specimen from a cart—the trolley was more of a dolly—to a steel work bench Catherine liked to use to leave all the parts of a new firearm out for her admiration a week before its unveiling. Dirt skittered off, rattling away on the floor. Frost began to melt, smearing the steel like lipstick kisses.

Chunks of granite, ice, and hard earth had been chipped away to reveal a block of the same in human form. More precise tools had whittled away to flesh dangling from a rock sleeve. A few long, blue, otherwise human-looking fingers poked through, nails still intact, though torn and blackened.

Gast held up a handful of curled, black ribbons, offering one to Catherine and the other to Kane. Adjusting her glasses, Catherine took one, held it in the light, and pursed her lips. The hard material had sharp edges and didn't bend its shape like Drake had thought it would. It seemed almost like—

"Fingernail," Gast said. "It grew while she was entombed. Which means—"

"Don't get ahead of yourself." Drake snorted. "Just because you found a creature with long fingernails sealed in a rock box, doesn't mean someone could have lived—how long?"

"Approximately 2000 years, according to the dating of the material in the surrounding area," Gast said. He used his kerchief to wipe his spectacles again. "If you look closely, you'll notice the downward bend. There's a large granite casing around her, but it left her with space. The shape suggests that the nails grew along the tomb."

Faremis turned to Doctor Tuesti. "If you'll look at these documents, Doctor Tuesti." Gast handed Kane a sheaf of paper he had had tucked under his arm.

"Just because she was alive for a while, and granted, it would have to be a long while, after they buried her, doesn't mean—"

"Doctor Drake,"—Kane whispered the kind of whisper that seemed louder than a scream—"please look at these."

Catherine Drake knew next to nothing about biology, aside from human ballistics. She liked guns, the way a canon shuddered and gunpowder spilled over a field. She liked swords, the way metal turned pliable, but still deadly, out of a forge. Yet even she could read. Yet even she knew what, "Heart rate: 32 bpm" meant.

Whatever it was, it was alive. And Catherine Drake? She might as well be dead.

* * *

When little Katie turned eight years old, her father taught her how to make explosives. He took a glass bottle and filled it with gunpowder. Then he threw it at Great Glacier, and a cloud of black cotton bloomed in its side.

Katie made one the next day, having picked the lock to the cupboard in her parents' bedroom, and threw it at the neighbor's cat.

"You never should have shown her something like that," her mother said, holding Tuesday's laundry and a suitcase. "It's not good for a child to see things so horrible."

Probably not. So Little Katie wouldn't be a child anymore.

That same cat vanished, leaving its feet, its tail, and its ears behind, surrounding a crater about the size of Katie's head. In exchange for having the privilege of making more things like that bottle—that bottle that could move everything else—Katie would gladly give up being anything at all.

When Catherine—as she had started calling herself—turned sixteen, she stole engineering texts from the library—her mother wouldn't let her have a library card or a father anymore—and started sitting in the lobby of Shinra Manufacturing Works every day for the hour between when she finished at the bakery and her mother returned home. The receptionist, twirling her fake pearl necklace, told her they could start her on clerical work.

"I want to make weapons," Catherine insisted.

Once, she happened to catch The President leaving early to pick up his son from school. Catherine leapt between him and the door and said, "I am about to start work for you."

"Funny," Jonathan Shinra said, "I've never seen you before." Then he stepped around her as if she were an awkwardly placed lobby fountain and slipped through the door.

The next day, early in the morning, before her shift at the bakery, Catherine threw an explosive much more destructive than the one her father had taught her to make at the front porch of Shinra Manufacturing Works. It left chunks of the front stoop and a wide Ilich-sized hole in the wood of the door. Jonathan Shinra, who had just arrived outside for the work day, could not say that he had never seen her before anymore.

Instead of handing her over to the authorities, Jonathan Shinra made a deal with her mother to keep her record clean.

He kept her in the building's basement.

Of course, it was furnished. Catherine had a plain bed with white sheets, at least three dresses, a round side table, a chair, and set of square dishes. There wasn't much heat, so she asked for more blankets and a coat, and they gave them to her. They also installed a furnace and supplied her with coal.

Anything to distract her from the guard stationed outside her door.

"You just have to impress me," President Shinra said. "You're not a prisoner.

Well, then what was she exactly?

After the Drake Weapons came from the basement of Shinra Manufacturing Works, the story President Shinra's son sold to the press read, "Jonathan Shinra Gambles on Blue Collar and Gets Paid."

Catherine Drake wasn't sure she counted as blue collar—or much of anything. But what she made was a company man and a brand new world.

* * *

It certainly didn't look much like an Ancient.

If Catherine Drake had to compare it to anything, she'd compare it to Tuesti's wife: all blue, no shampoo.

She thought it was funny at any rate.

The foreman and his people had cracked open the granite box to reveal a blue-skinned woman. Sort of. A little. She had a tail. And arms that reminded Catherine of the hunkered over wraith-trees that grew at the base of Great Glacier. They were puce. Catherine thought puce only looked good on prostitutes, but she doubted the Ancient could make any money that way.

Kane Tuesti had allowed Gast Faremis to name it. He called it "Jenova." Catherine would have felt insulted, had she been even mildly religious.

It didn't move. Its heart rate increased to 36 bpm, but remained constant over the course of the next three days. Catherine thought they should get rid of it, but Tuesti and Faremis considered the Ancient a breakthrough in their attempts to create a biological engine. It would keep living, no matter what. If they could find out how to feed it, how to cut it up and use its pieces, they could harvest a field with a monster.

For her part, Catherine Drake did her best to avoid Jenova. She had to walk by the room Gast had chosen for it every day, and as she did, silt would rest on her eyelids and scratch the back of her skull. Jenova had brought The Sleeping Forest with her. Faremis said that they had had to dig into the outskirts of The Sleeping Forest to find Jenova. Had the Ancients paved the earth with the bodies of their dead? Did the trees grow from corpses, spreading tired revenge on humanity?

The silt scratching at the back of Catherine's skull persisted. She rested her hand on the front of Jenova's door.

"He'll replace you someday."

* * *

On Catherine's eighteenth birthday, Jonathan Shinra came down to her fancy box and told her that he had arranged for her to use the forge and attend the Iron Works College in Icicle Square, as long as she came straight back to the Works every day.

"I just want to make weapons," Catherine repeated, as if she had forgotten how to say anything else. She went anyway, of course.

By twenty, however, fickle Catherine had concocted a plan to break her promise. She threatened the guard with the musket she had managed to piece together, hoping she'd melted down enough iron bearing from scrap she pilfered from the forge and chiseled enough gun powder from the coal they gave her.

A couple shots after she opened the door to her room, and the guard backed down. Then she walked from the building like any other ungroomed researcher who had not seen his wife or a bath in a week.

It came, she suspected, from the conflict of insisting over and over again that one is nothing and beating together weapons that could not possibly come from nothing. The "I" in "I want to make weapons."

Then, instead of running home to _a_ mother, Catherine would rather lose the conflict and disappear. She went to the forest to the south, which all Icicle children learned to avoid when their friends vanished and never returned. No search party would follow after them.

By the time Catherine reached the Sleeping Forest, she had lost half her iron bearings to the ribcages of stray bandersnatches following the trail left by her unwashed scent, and the other half had squeezed through the finger-sized hole in her pocket. Her thighs and fingers burned black with powder. Catherine dropped the musket at the tree line, having failed it, and listened to the forest.

Nothing. She threw herself in.

Inside the forest, her skull squeezed, and her internal temperature dropped. Hunger drifted up through her feet, but she recognized it as other. In places, the earth had a heartbeat. Snow faded, all became green and gold, but Catherine still felt cold.

Bark from the trees flattened her corneas and tore out her insides until she fell, fell, and the dirt bit her cheeks like meat it hadn't tasted in decades.

"Your weapons shrivels before my flesh."

Catherine wanted to argue, but she'd left her gun outside the forest—as if she had stood on her own throat.

She didn't remember much from after she lost consciousness.

Just a hand on her wrist. A voice.

"Don't come here; we put _it_ here. Next time you come, I'll leave you to rot."

* * *

"I am the new face of Shinra."

Doctor Drake ripped the door open and saw Jenova again for the first time since the unveiling. Though her heart rate remained at 36bpm, the flesh had gotten stronger. It reminded Catherine of the bark of Sleeping Forest trees. Strong—so that the room palpitated along with it.

God, to be a potato in Kane's office.

Jenova's arms seemed to have grown, stretching down to the floor. Veins—red vines, Shinra vines—congealed in wild ribbons just below the skin.

Penknives, needles, and syringes littered the table top. Tuesti and Gast used them to collect samples. Fear kept them from glory when it should spur them to act.

Catherine grabbed a knife and, without hesitation, cut along the red veins of Jenova's left arm. The skin split, beads kissed the cuts, leaking to the floor. A splash colored Catherine's cheeks when she sliced an artery. Fresh blood, too fresh for someone who came from the roots of Sleeping Forest trees, too fresh for someone who could live without oxygen. She closed her eyes and pressed deeper, dragging the knife along the arm, up to Jenova's throat.

Then she opened her eyes.

The knife stuck out from the neck of a pale, naked blond. Catherine recognized her in the vague way that she had recognized herself after two years without mirrors: the same sense of recognition and not recognition. A replica of Catherine Drake, blue in death. Blood flooded from a line from her wrist to her throat.

Catherine closed her eyes again. Prone to madness, that's what Jonathan had said. Well, it was a wonder, the way she had lived her young adult life. She just had to avoid running scared. People saw things all the time. Strange things. Erda Tinning running naked through the Sleeping Forest things.

When Catherine opened her eyes again, the Catherine she had seen on the table had transformed back into Jenova, and the scalpel knife which had stuck form her neck lay, harmless, on the table beside her. The long line of damage had vanished, and blood continued to flow under Jenova's skin like sludge without an exit point.

"Your weapons shrivels before my flesh."

Catherine grabbed the scalpel and threw it. The knife clattered against the hard clay of the basement, glinting in low light as it fell.

Fine, Catherine thought, just fine. Then she pressed her face close to Jenova's so that her nose touched the cold nose of the near corpse. She swore she saw eyelashes flutter as she wrapped her fingers around Jenova's biceps, but she ignored them and willed her heart rate to slow.

36 bpm.

"I don't know what you are, bitch, but this is my company, and I won't let some Snow Pollensalta, Faremis, or that damn _chivy_ and his basil plants take it from me."

The clang of her heels rang on her way out.

* * *

_Please review._


	6. Chapter 5: Monster Chunk Rally

"The President is dead! Now I'm doing things my way!"

-Martin Heidegger, first Military Consultant and Head of Public Safety

**Chapter 5: Monster Chunk Rally**

Word spread through Junon quickly. Paer Rolfe had left Wildlands. No one knew where he had gone, only that he had not shown his face around the phoenix's roost. At first, people thought he had died in the battle on the hillside, but those prone to poetics said "The Falconer wouldn't fall from such a high peak."

Resentment infiltrated the ranks. So many of them had died for Paer's insurrection, and now no one would get revenge for Sergeant Goddard and insert-name-here.

Private Marty Heidegger was sick of hearing about Paer Rolfe. Good riddance, he thought. If he was such a damn problem, then it didn't matter how he left, just that he did. No one in charge thought very clearly, which was why Marty was still a private.

Jeremiah Flint used to go a long way keeping Marty's outbursts—as he called them—in check. Whenever Marty wanted to wave his hand at platoon meetings in the mess hall or scribble graffiti of himself on walls—it was nothing personal; he just found himself attractive—Jerry put his arm down or slid a finger along his throat. To an extent, Marty had to agree with Jerry. No one liked a show off, so Marty would let his actions speak for themselves.

Then Jerry took a steel-tipped Wuteng dart to his neck. Marty still remembered the red guzzling down his front, and the way all he could do was clutch at his collar bone as he sunk into the dirt. Nothing glamorous about dying in war, Marty thought, so he'd live and make something of himself. He needed to get noticed, and maybe being loud and annoying was a good enough way as any. After he wrote the note to Jerry's next-of-kin, he sent in an application to train in Tarnish, the secret operations division that sent most on the path to officer-ship, but he'd never make his way in without a fuss.

A couple days later, he sat in the mess with his platoon, his tray piled in mash because that was the only thing no one bothered to ration. A growing boy needed his starch and his padding to burn through on march. Marty, you'll be a giant of a man, he told himself. If only they had margarine. As it was, he had to roll the cigarettes he got in his rations and trade them for salt to avoid getting his dinner wet in the ocean—he had considered it. Not smoking paid off in flavor. He never had enough salt. Salt put hairs on a man's chest, and at fifteen, he didn't have nearly enough.

"So, for the next assault," Private Hansen started, "I hear they're splitting and looking for the entrance to that hill undercover. I say it's the best way. That's how they win, right? They know the layout of this place."

Silver clacked against the steel, and mouthfuls of agreement and speculation poured out. Marty licked a stray lump of potato from his fork and cleared his throat. "I don't know why we're still trying to get to that thing," he said.

One could say many things about Marty Heidegger, but to argue with the carrying capacity of his voice would be to err. Half his platoon, those sitting nearest, dropped their forks and raised their eyebrows. The silence lasted only a moment before Hansen started talking again.

"Anyway, I was saying, they might even try an' send in Tarnish to get 'em at night and pick off a few in the tunnels. Maybe try to light fires and smoke them out."

"Seems to me"—Marty began molding the potatoes with the handle of his fork, creating a model of the terrain from the mash—"we've gotten so obsessed with Paer Rolfe, we've forgotten why we're here in the first place."

"All right, Heidegger." Hansen sighed, shook his head, as if already tired of talking to him. "Why are we here?"

"To roll chivvies," Marty said, indignant. "You know how many of those sea snakes have anything to do with Phoenix? I'll give you a hint. Starts with 'n,' and rhymes with 'one,' but there ain't. If you know what I'm saying." Then Marty chuckled. He thought himself hilarious.

"We're here to expand our Nation," Hansen said. "You're a moron, Heidegger."

"_You_ might be here to expand our Nation, but we're supposed to point-n-shoot, and if we aren't getting that mountain in the middle of nowhere, you can bet chivies aren't." Marty shook his head. "So why can't we move on?"

The doors to the mess creaked open. Some genius Paer Rolfe was. Couldn't even make quiet door hinges. The musk of outside came in with Captain Reiner. Reiner didn't keep his boots or his uniform clean, and dried mud flaked from the bottoms of his slacks and his galoshes into the mess. He didn't shave, either, but few did. Marty wished he had hair to shave.

Whenever Captain Reiner came in, he stalked by the 23rd platoon, Marty's, and nodded to the privates like he wanted them to feel more valued than bodies lining the front. Then he got his plate of mash, corn, and black beans before he sat at the officer's table and tried to schmooze with the General.

Hansen gave Marty a _look_ as the Captain strode by, as if to tell him "don't even think it, keep your head down," but Hansen wasn't Jeremiah. Jeremiah was dead.

"All I'm saying is, I think the higher ups are wasting their time ramming us up that mountain and watching us roll down it." Captain Reiner paused. Marty could smell dried mud behind him. "Idiots, if you ask me. What's the point in dying when we already have materia? The chivvies don't have anything. And if so many people die on the way up, against that Kjata, what is the Phoenix going to do for us anyway?"

The Captain remained standing only for a moment behind Marty before he resumed his stride toward the mess line. Hansen almost stepped on Marty's foot, but Marty had anticipated it and scooted aside in time.

"You're lucky," Hansen said.

"No I'm not," Marty grumbled. "He didn't say anything to me. I wanted him to say something."

"You're a piece of work." Hansen spooned mash into his mouth. "Keep talking like that, and he'll say something, all right. He'll have you feathered."

"Maybe I'm a bird he might have a chance of killing."

* * *

Marty remained committed to getting noticed. Every time Reiner passed the 23rd platoon mess for the next two weeks, he barked about how much of an idiot the Captain was. It never provoked a greater reaction than the first time. At one point, Marty even insulted Reiner's sense of cleanliness and his "bird legs," but Reiner didn't so much as change his pace.

As his attacks grew personal and less effective, Marty realized that, should he draw any attention, he would have to make himself more persuasive to his compatriots. No one in the 23rd platoon, however, seemed interested in disavowing officers when they were in earshot. Marty spooned his potatoes, two weeks later, noticing that their appeal seemed to lessen every day, and felt a sense of defeat spread over him—after, of course, he considered flinging his food at Reiner's head and discarded the idea.

The mess hall was packed with so many platoons that the chatter scraped into the walls. The fires of the kitchens left creosote stains. Men rattled on through their corn, not appreciating it. Gold didn't have a hard line on frivolous talk. After all, Paer Rolfe never said a damn word before he assassinated an officer, stole supplies, and started wearing red feathers.

Hansen eyed Marty across the table, expecting him to launch into tirade, no doubt, but Marty held his tongue and ate his silence.

At least Marty had drills to keep him occupied. Platoons took shifts on march. When they weren't scheduled, the platoon leaders ran them through drills as if they were still in basic to keep them in top form. Well, at least Marty's platoon leader did; he heard the regs weren't standardized.

The 23rd Platoon stood in lines beside the harbor, running in place, dropping to their stomachs, burying their chins in the dirt, scuffing their knees on the way back up, and calling out numbers. Marty liked drills. He never had to work extra hard to keep up, and the strain made him feel like he was getting somewhere. He ate more potatoes so he could feel himself squeeze them out in drops of sweat.

They went through the motions forty meters away from Junon, near the coastal cliff, but away from the harbor. The sea kissed their backs, and the sunshine bore down just away from the shade cast by Junon's walls.

Sergeant Bishop supervised their drills and lead the march. He curled up his lower lip and nodded approvingly at synchronization. If one man couldn't drop in time, everyone dropped. Everyone did pushups. Everyone whined about the aches in their backs, but not aloud. Marty supposed it was designed to instill camaraderie, but he always imagined bayoneting the man who failed his timing and chewed his bottom lip when they finished their twenty.

The 23rd platoon had just completed a round of camaraderie-instilling pushups when a private first class, his white stripes flashing on his boots, trotted up to hand Sergeant Bishop a missive. He gave a salute and rushed back to Junon. Bishop unrolled the missive and called attention.

Every private ceased jogging in place and gritted their teeth through sweat to keep their spines as straight as the stick up Reiner's ass.

"Early dismissal," Bishop declared. "You're welcome to head to the mess before the rush. At ease."

The 23rd Platoon slumped and started walking, straight-legged, in case they were being graded, back to Junon.

"Heidegger," the Sergeant called.

At the moment, Marty had his back to the Sergeant. He felt his last name pull a string at the base of his neck and root him. Sergeant Bishop never singled anyone out after drills. If there was a specific missive, he found the man in mess where babble about puppy litters back home and cigarette trades cloaked him.

"One moment, please."

Marty did not bother to turn around. He thought it safer not to appear anymore out of line than freezing away from the platoon already had. He took a deep breath and suddenly felt smugness seep into his countenance. He marveled a moment at where it might have come from, but then he soaked it up and felt his chest swell.

He must have made Reiner mad after all.

After the rest of the platoon had advanced several meters ahead, huddled and whispering conspiratorially about Marty's impending notoriety, no doubt, Bishop cleared his throat. Marty turned on his heel to see Bishop standing only a couple steps in front of him.

"It's your bid to train for Tarnish, Heidegger," Bishop began. "It's been discarded, and I thought you should know why."

Not expecting Bishop's words, Marty felt heat rush across his face. He itched for a bayonet again. "All because I said a couple lousy words to Reiner?"

This time, Bishop was surprised. "What does Captain Reiner have to do with anything?"

Marty swallowed. He had wanted special attention, but not the kind that denied him training in Tarnish before interview process even started. No one got promoted above Sergeant without a stint in Tarnish, and everyone knew that. But if it had nothing to do with Reiner—that just meant Bishop had no idea what he was talking about. Marty wished he had decided to fling his potatoes up Reiner's nose after all.

When it became clear Marty would not respond, Sergeant Bishop sighed. "You'll be able to bid next year, but the fact of the matter is—"

As Bishop opened his mouth to deliver what Marty would likely consider red herring, the ground shook, and both their breaths seized.

"You felt that, Heidegger?" Bishop said, closing his eyes and scratching at his ragged neck. "I wasn't imagining it."

Marty prided himself in having a fight over flight response and turned toward Fort Condor. Even though the shaking of the ground reverberated at his feet, it could only come from one source.

Kjata stood, his feet stalking the ground and sending crashes and splits in the dirt around them. He pulled back his head and shook out his mane, sending flashes of red tinsel and violet horns to shock the Sun. The creature grew larger every time someone summoned him. He cast a shadow that covered the gates of Junon, and he blocked passage between Marty and the Sergeant. Marty trotted out toward the beast, not sure what he would do when he got there. Kjata had appeared out of nowhere, only meters away from where the Sergeant and the private had their powwow. He tried to scan the plains for The Chief of the Phoenix Tribe, but he saw no one.

The smug air crushed in Marty's chest and practically concaved his ribcage.

Though Marty had reached for his gun instinctively, platoons didn't even bring straps to drills. Only the task masters had them. He stopped running and looked behind him to watch Sergeant Bishop yank up his musket and rub his hand over one of the two materia slots in its hilt. Blue light careened out the muzzle. Marty recognized a Blizzard spell, and he ducked to avoid the cold. Ice nearly skimmed his stubble.

As light erupted from the end of Sergeant Bishop's musket, it kinked and swelled into the giant bull, tossing an ice pick at its flank, the remaining stragglers of the 23rd platoon fled through the gates of Junon toward a modicum of safety.

Kjata yanked back his mane in what Marty could only guess was mild agitation, for he took another quaking step forward and lost no time retaliating. Lightning from above Kjata's horns drilled a hole in the ground, bowling out the shore near the harbor right behind Marty into a sheer rock face at least fifty feet high.

Marty felt the shock at his back and held onto his breath, thankful that the Kjata had poor aim—until he remembered where Bishop had stood. He turned in time to watch Sergeant Bishop promptly lose his balance and catapult over the edge, leaving his musket at the cusp.

Marty swore and dove for the ledge—and the weapon, blast—just in time for the new cliff to shake below him. His jaw hit the ground, and the dirt scraped against his front teeth. Petrichor everywhere, as thick as a second layer of hair on the beast. He rolled onto his back to spot Kjata's wide breastplate, rent so low he couldn't stand.

Brilliant. He had managed to trap himself in a four-post cage. Thick, beefy—literally—legs bested careening onto rocky toothpicks with Sergeant Bishop, so he would take it.

Marty touched his raw jaw and tried to regain his sense of direction. Petrichor made him choke, and he swore he was beginning to smell smoke and salt. Heat, mist, and pins began to jab at once. Kjata may as well be a phantom who drifted through men and ghosted their insides into sludge.

Then Marty rediscovered Bishop's musket, the red glisten in its base beside the green glimmer of the Blizzard materia, and got the strength to lunge for it once more as Kjata reared onto its hind legs to slam down again.

The man who had slain Kjata had turned the tide of this war from man verus man to beast versus beast. It had been Bishop's mistake to call Blizzard when, in all appearances, he was in possession of a summon materia. Marty wouldn't survive if he couldn't reach Bishop's weapon.

Marty slid to avoid Kjata's hoof as he drove it down again, aiming for the tiny man. He found himself beside Bishop's weapon and lifted the musket with some difficulty, feeling the stick legs that held him buckle. Smoke billowed from Kjata's nostrils as if he shared the native's substance problem. The horns growing from its head might as well have been grill prongs for Suckling Marty. Were they shaped like lightning? Was its mane really made of fire? The beast pulled back its head to roar, calling more lightning—and _fuck_, how did this thing _work_?

Marty beat at the side of the musket and aimed, shaking it so hard he almost fell over.

"Please—_something_ come out of this."

Something came.

The ruckus began at Kajata's backside. Something massive came trampling from behind, interrupting Kjata's roar and turning it into a veal squeal. Its feet ticked up dirt like drills. Something terrifying, powerful, just what Mar—oh Ifrit, _did it just squawk_?

Trampling grew louder, and Marty saw a train of dirt emerging between Kjata's forelegs. Two crests of sand parted, and the dust settled.

A mog. Riding a chocobo. The mount skid suddenly and nearly fell, beak first, on top of Marty. Marty craned his neck around the great yellow bird in hopes that maybe something else could have made the loud noise he heard.

"Wark!"

Anything at all.

"Kupopopo?"

A long gash trailed in the dirt behind the pair and down between Kjata's back legs.

Nothing else was coming.

Having recovered from its apparent shock, Kjata raised its head again—this time, it seemed to be _laughing_—and let loose a sky-splitting bay.

Marty decided he could no longer take this—literally—lying down. Kjata snorted, and its eyes began to glow, signaling the approach of another devastating lightning bolt. Marty latched onto the wing of the chocobo, prompting a pained "Wark!" He threw himself, lugging the musket, onto the bird's spine. The mog fluttered and flopped off the chocobo's rear, hovering in the air.

Marty drove his heals into the chocobo's sides the way he had seen the natives urge them to move. The chocobo cocked its head and didn't budge.

"Just get me out of here!"

The chocobo spun on its heels and barreled back the way it came, just as Kjata's lightning obliterated the space where Marty had lain. Smoke drifted from the once cliff face. The countryside around Junon certainly had shrunk, shorn off and split to the sea.

Ground shook as Kjata began to shift around after him. Marty imagined it would take the great boar a significant amount of time to perform an about face, but he proved swift for his size, and ornerier than ever. His eyes shifted an orange hue, and fire _actually_ erupted from his nostrils.

"That can't be a good sign."

The chocobo began to jostle, and a slight turn of his head revealed that Mog had begun to bounce exuberantly on its mount's tail feathers. Marty felt he would also exhale flame if he had the power. He leaned back, forcing Mog to fly off the chocobo again. This time, however, Mog flew high and dove for the face of Kjata.

Marty cringed. He had no affection for the Mog, and it was a phantom of a creature already dead, after all, but this would not be pretty.

Mog barreled headfirst toward Kjata's snout, bouncing off. Kjata worried its head as if it desired to itch its nose, and Mog fluttered away, wobbling through the sky, dizzy.

Most days, Marty would use this opportunity to make his escape, but if he fled for Junon, Kjata would surely follow. It would trample him and other Gold Citizens at the fort. He would have to find a way to stall until the summon wore off.

He gripped the hand cannon, and he aimed it at Kjata's throat. The flint clipped in his hand, and he almost lost hold of it, but a spark, a whiff of sulfur, and a burst made a black spot on Kjata's neck just as it had reasserted itself.

Instead of becoming further dazed, however, Kjata once again rolled back on its heels to trample the ground. This time, the chocobo raced to the side without Marty's prompting. The quaking had an unfortunate effect on Marty's backside, but he'd live.

He surveyed the bird below him with dismay. "Damnit. Why aren't you bigger?"

Just as he lamented the small size of the chocobo and mog duo, he felt his hamstring muscles stretch. He began to slide off the chocobo, unable to remain astride. Instead, he grabbed a handful of feathers at the back of the chocobo's neck as it grew. The distressed "Wark" deepened in pitch, and Marty wondered if he would develop altitude sickness as a broad expanse of yellow fluff began to fill his vision.

Finally, the chocobo ceased to swell. Marty felt as if he were a tag on the back of a fat bird's shirt. He could only see yellow feathers, and they began to fill his mouth and nose. He spat them out and turned his vision to the side.

As Marty could no longer see Kjata, he did not expect to have his balance disturbed. The bird rocked backwards as Kjata rammed it, squawking despondently, and Marty careened dangerously toward the ground below.

Just before the back of the fat bird hit, Marty let go and rolled aside. The ground was _not_ a good place to be when a giant hooved beast continued to rear back slam the earth. He stood and bolted away, almost falling face first as he tripped over Bishop's musket strap.

When Marty turned, cringing in expectation, to view how the bird had fared, he had to raise an eyebrow. Instead of falling on its back, the chocobo had merely rocked to the ground and swung, reverting to a sitting position. It seemed the giant bird had grown so bottom heavy that Kjata could not unbalance it.

For good measure, Kjata rammed his skull against the bird's fat face again. Once more, it rocked back with a loud thump and immediately righted itself, issuing a resigned squawk.

Kjata snorted in frustration and appeared about to ram the bird again. All the while, the mog remained hovering around its horns, appearing disgruntled. It looked to Marty, and he swore he could feel it _glaring_ at him from afar.

"Hey, Kjata!" Marty bellowed, feeling as if the mog expected him to _do_ something.

He immediately regretted it when Kjata roared and switched its head, blasting smoke from its nostrils. The skies darkened. Embers glowed. The whole damn shebang.

Fumbling with frozen fingers and the brittle hammer of the musket, Marty found himself actually _kneeling_ as Kjata began to stomp assuredly toward him.

Out the corner of his eye, Marty saw the mog flap its way over to a fat tuft of hair atop the chocbo's head and pinch it between its lower paws. He wiggled and flapped his wings with gusto, as if he were actually trying to—

_Dear God what is that thing?_

Marty nearly dropped his musket when he saw the fat chocbo which Kjata could not unsettle rise visibly from the ground. The grass below its rump had flattened into mulch tiles. Marty could smell the freshly broken blades, even through the sulfur, as they aerated.

All the while, Kjata remained oblivious and continued stalking toward Marty. The musket shuddered in his grip as a charge went off and vanished into a space of sky between Kjata and the chocobo. Marty had fired it absent-mindedly in view of the spectacle.

"Damnit." He bit his lip so hard it bled, the taste of salt stronger than his knees giving under him. He had no choice but to wobble to his feet and abandon the musket in an attempt to run before Kjata got too close.

When Marty looked again toward the chocobo, it had vanished, leaving a dark spot on the grass where it had sat. Mog had managed to lift the giant chocobo, at least the size of two Kjata's—it had _grown_ as well—above the pronged horns of the bull beast.

Instead of running away from the bull, Marty decided to dash _toward _it.

Lightning bolts cascaded down, sparking across the ground, heat-seeking shockwaves Marty had to leap over in order to keep his forward motion. The heat seared through his boots, and he could feel the rubber burning as the grass caught fire. Still, Marty kept running forward, and as he drew closer, Kjata raised his hooves rhythmically, trying to land them.

As Kjata's left hoof grazed the top of Marty's head—he could actually feel the tremors on the ends of his _hair_—he heard the loud screech of Mog above Kjata.

"Kupopopo!"

Marty interpreted the call as a signal and turned on his heel to his left, running the belly of the beast, intent on freedom.

As soon as he had begun the clear the shadow of Kjata, a shard of ice pierced up through the ground, and he tripped over it, falling face first in the dirt and rolling over on his back.

Sunlight had been completely obscured by shadow. Even as Marty looked, this shadow began to shrink.

"Wark!"

A loud crash echoed just above Kjata, forcing a bay. The beast's knees buckled, unable to sustain the weight of the giant bird which mog had dumped on his spine.

One knee bent forward. Marty realized, suddenly, that if he didn't move in less than a second, he would be crushed under the weight of Kjata and the giant chocobo.

Marty latched onto the ice spike, letting the freeze burn his bare hand and pulled himself quickly up, using the momentum from his hold to dive hard away from Kjata and _pray_ to whatever god would hear him that Kjata would not fall to its right.

Luckily, the left knee of Kjata buckled _first_, and the beast wobbled that way. It lost its footing. Marty watched as the small mog creature beat its bonboned head against the side of the fat chocobo in an effort to encourage the yellow and red conglomeration to meet its catastrophic crash away from Marty. Whether it helped or not, Marty felt he could rely on some semblance of competency from the thing, so his desire to cause it harm had abated.

A few moments of trepidation, then the beast came down. The Planet shook below Marty, nearly tossing him airborne. It ground uncomfortably into his back, and he felt something snap as the ice pillar crashed against his leg. Dirt—not dust, actual lumps of dirt—flew and flecked the sky in the wake of the crash. Then, for a moment, silence.

He couldn't move. He couldn't see a thing.

The breeze wove between pockets of dust, and Marty could only see the one, fat, egg-shaped obelisk through milky air.

* * *

When Marty awoke, he was in Reiner's quarters. Well, he assumed they were Reiner's quarters because he recognized the flecks of mud on the boots by the door. The contents smelled like outside. The sheets chafed. And, well, Reiner was at the desk.

Reiner cleared his throat. "We think the natives sent Kjata at the walls of Junon to try to break them down," he said. "It was a sneak attack, no men at risk, very much their style—or Rolfe's. Instead, a private gave us a show."

Marty couldn't feel anything but the ache in his back and the chafe of the sheets, so he didn't have time to register any implications of Reiner's words. "A surprise attack?" he mumbled.

"No one is sure, but it was unexpected. There was no reason for Kjata to be on the plains when we haven't made a move toward Fort Condor. We couldn't find anyone who would have summoned him, either, when we sent several armed squads out to patrol." Reiner flipped what Marty could only guess was a piece of dried grass between his fingers. He had sock-less feet splayed on his desk and his back braced against a creaking wooden chair.

"I suppose we should have expected it," Reiner continued when he was met by silence. "Or that's what you would say, isn't it? We've been focused on beating down the natives, and it never occurred to us that, once they got their footing, they might strike out at us with Kjata."

Marty still couldn't bring himself to say anything. He was trying to comprehend the realization that he was, indeed, _in Captain Reiner's office_. He nearly fell out of bed trying to stand to attention. His back seemed to be trying to scrape itself off his spine. His bare feet hit the wood and encountered pebbles of dirt. A tiny piece of gravel bit into his right pinky toe. He looked in the back corner and saw a barrel stove. Would he fit if he decided to hide?

Captain Reiner rolled his eyes. "So now you're respectful. I get you one-on-one, and it feels more like I can kill you, doesn't it?"

Marty narrowed his eyes and lowered his hand from his salute. He worked up a pocket of saliva in his mouth, but thought better of it and swallowed it down with a gulp.

"You pulled Kjata off Junon with a summon materia most of us considered worthless. If you wanted to talk, now would be the time, Hero."

Again, Marty swallowed. He had imagined what being singled out might feel like. He imagined steeling his courage and calling out bluffs. He imagined having to do pushups or spending a few meals in barrack solitary.

He was getting recognized. For something. Good. Something _he_ did.

It had not occurred to him that he might have low self esteem until that moment, but really, he was all hot air. How revealing.

For the life of him, Marty couldn't figure out if it had been heroic. He remembered feeling flabbergasted and fighting for his life, but he hadn't really thought of Junon for a second. If it had occurred to him that Kjata might be more interested in ramming in the walls, and Marty could have tempted him toward them, he probably would have. Maybe that's what heroics were: misunderstandings. Considering the people in charge, that would explain a lot.

"Well, Boy," Reiner said, picking at what appeared to be black chewing tobacco under his nails, "Bishop's dead, unfortunately. There was one casualty when there could have been scores. How would you like to have his job?"

Still, Marty couldn't think of anything to say. He tried to come up with a thank you or pull out his trademark—well, he considered it trademark—bravado, but he just stared at Reiner.

"I'm going to assume that's a yes, considering how full of yourself you are, and the fact that you think the rest of the officers are idiots. That means you'll do better than he did, right?"

Marty swallowed and scratched at his nose, trying to pry the daze off his face.

"You're dismissed, Sergeant," Reiner said. "Your paperwork's at the front office."

Marty gave a half-hearted salute and shuffled from Reiner's quarters. He nearly tripped on the boots on the way out.

* * *

_Please take a moment to review._


	7. Chapter 6: Mister Bugenhagen's House

**Chapter 6: Mister Bugenhagen Builds His Dream House**

Johann has been loyal to too many things for the past fifty years of his life, since he dared venture into the caverns below Cosmo Canyon where the rocks are more alive than the people who inhabit them. When he came out at the age of forty one, his legs had stiffened, he could breathe again, and he felt old—far too old for forty one. The Elders of the Canyon told him Gi Nattack had put the curse of age on him; he will always feel it, and he will never die until he reaches at least a century of age.

Johann did not put much stock in at first, but he just kept getting older.

At fifteen, Johann began work in the Coal Mines in Reit village. The rock didn't crush him, and he made it through school, got promoted to a desk job in Nibelheim at Nibelectric, and sat there, walls pressuring him, for seventy years, exempting his stints in Cosmo Canyon: his trip below ground, his weekend classes, his summer lectures.

You could say Johann has spent his life in a cave.

Johannes Bugenhagen's house in Nibelheim had mostly wooden furniture. His favorite chair was walnut ladder, his bed creaked of splintering slats. The oak of his cane ate into his knuckle bones. The prize adornment of his living quarters, the cherry wood desk, had turned burgundy by age and pen scratches. A stack of letters sat on the lower left corner of Johann's desk, wrapped in tinsel string since winter, when he received his last letter from his great grandson serving in the Wildlands invasive infantry.

When it was cold in Nibelheim, Bugenhagen lit the furnace, holding his cane in his fist as he stooped over pine logs. Creosote in his stack pipe built up over the winter months. Over the past four years, he had students from Cosmo Canyon clean it out in the spring for twenty percent of their tuition. Before that, Johann's granddaughter had done the work for him.

The pantry never had anything worth a damn anymore. When was the last time a neighbor had felt sorry for him? Probably before he had made a hat for Mrs. Kempf from her Parsley Potato Salad.

Pickled Heg and onions tasted like kissing the snake itself-or a whiskered human spitting venom. Johann did not miss women so much as he missed missing women. He did not mind the taste.

Johann could not bring himself to have his dinner at his desk, so he ate it, standing up, in the kitchen and put on the slippers and gown his wife had made for him thirty years ago. It had holes, and the mattress chafed his skin, but he told himself he could not justify the expense of a new one.

When he awoke in the mornings, the stove had invariably flickered out. His desk hadn't burned to ash from the creosote. The letters were pristine, wrapped together in the bow his joints had objected.

The one thing he had always had for ninety years the war had gobbled up. Bhatti replaced it with her visions. For more than seventy five years of loyalty, Lizveta Palmer would not hold his pensions in ransom over the secret that would power the globe. Johann had no intention of leaving her.

As such, just three days after Johann Bugenhagen turned ninety one, when Jonathan Shinra began sending emissaries—even arriving once himself—begging Johann to join Shinra Manufacturing Works and leave Nibelectric for handsome amounts in Sno, Johann refused to budge. What use does an old man have for money—for another country? None.

Jonathan Shinra understood something of old men. Johann expected his next offer to be different.

A boy his great grandson's age and a titan of a man from Reit village chewed up by the Wildlands and spit out by his own people—a traitor-sat in his office. The boy swiveled the dusky hint of a blond mustache and the heavyweight brushed hair from his face and hunched over, glancing sideways as if he expected the people of Nibelheim to storm the small office building of Nibelectric and prod him with pitchforks.

Johann ran a brittle finger over the rim of his coffee, picked it up, and took a sip.

"I told Mister Shinra I'm not interested in a job at his company."

The boy snorted. "It's a good thing I'm not here to offer you one, then, isn't it?"

"Ho, aren't you? What are you doing in my office? Should I have someone find you a boat back North? I believe the loading dock is a ways in Costa."

The young man folded his hands as if he were a veteran in these types of confrontations. Johann had to bite his lip to avoid laughing.

"Shinra Manufacturing Works has procured a large parcel of land in Nibelheim. We're here to expand."

Johann slid forward in his chair as if to get up and totter to the door to show them out. "Then I best not keep you gentlemen in my office. You have important work to do that doesn't concern me."

The boy looked over at his companion, who appeared to suddenly find Johann's coffee cup fascinating. Johann must admit that the mug fashioned of fired clay with a likeness of his mustache scrawled around its waist stood out as one of his favorite affects, made for him by his grandson. The boy cleared his throat, and the large man nearly bolted from his seat.

"Sorry, Simon. I was just noticing—you don't have much, do you, Old Man?"

Simon—the boy's name, Johann supposed—clenched his lips. "Excuse me, Mister Rolfe?"

"He doesn't have much in terms of decorations. I thought, if I was gonna' build this guy a Mansion, he'd have some covetous way about him. You know, a hoarder. Likes—_things_."

Johann found himself stumped for the first instance in a long line of instances which comprised his old age. He could have sworn he had just heard _Paer Rolfe_, the traitor of Gold Nation, suggest that he had arrived in Nibelheim to build Johannes Bugenhagen a house.

Simon's left eyebrow ticked. His teeth clacked together in a sharp, single motion. "Mister Rolfe, would you mind gathering some takeout for our hotel? I think it would be best if—"

Paer Rolfe snorted. He brushed off his trousers and stood. "I get it," he said. "I'll see you back there. It was good to meet you, Old Man."

As Paer Rolfe stumbled from his office, he put pressure down on Johann's shoulder—a light tap. His version of a handshake for someone who hadn't earned one, no doubt. At the moment, Johann did not much fancy shaking the hand of the man who turned the front against the natives in The Wildlands.

It was only personal.

The door clicked shut. That left the unpleasant task of removing Simon Shinra from Johann's office.

The boy resumed his seat, crossing his legs and bowing low over his folded hands. He looked tired, an affectation which Johann found rather irritating. What did a boy his age have to be tired about?

"I apologize for…"

For a moment, the beginning of remorse hung in the office, taking up more space than the notebooks stacked neatly on the shelf, the metal desk rocking on a sawed off front leg. Then words fell, false and flat.

"Well, I'm not really sorry." Simon laughed. The smile that spread across his face removed the stuffy pretense of the business man he wasn't. His upper lip ceased to twitch. His hands found the armrests on his plaid guest chair. "To be honest, Doctor Bugenhagen, I can't apologize for Mister Rolfe, because he's right. I have no idea what we're doing here."

Johann took another sip from his coffee mug.

"My old man is very stubborn and extremely foolish. He thinks he might persuade you to join Shinra Manufacturing Works by moving a branch out here. Somehow, he thinks you'll find our operations more persuasive if you see them in action. I don't think—persuasion has anything to do with your refusal to join my father's company."

Bugenhagen let his spectacles fall down the bridge of his nose. "But he isn't just setting up another branch of Shinra Manufacturing Works here, is he? He's setting it up with me in mind."

Johann could see how a man like Jonathan Shinra, convinced he could get whatever he wanted, might create a department without a head and assume Johann would step in. He could see him forcing Paer Rolfe and his son upon an old man like hounds sniffing out a dream job. Too bad Johann didn't have one.

Simon scratched his chin. "He thinks Mister Rolfe has some kind of power to gauge what people need. I think he has the social understanding of a ten year old streaker—him and my father."

"Hm, what about you, then?"

Simon chuckled. He leaned over Johann's desk and brushed off a thin layer of dust covering a stack of papers marked for burning. Then he picked up a yellow sheet with an integral scratched on the bottom left corner. He rolled the sheet up, needing something to do with his hands, no doubt.

"That's the stupidest part of the entire thing," Simon said. "If there's a chance this will work—that my old man isn't wrong—I want to be the one that does it for him. I don't want him to make things besides weapons or get too ambitious. It won't work. If he wanted to start a company around energy, he should have.

"I'm not even sure I believe you _have_ some magical formula or secret knowledge to power the world. After all, if you did, why wouldn't you have used it? And if you did, and have no intention of using it, how would my old man learn about it? If this falls into his lap, though, I want to put it there for him. I want my father's approval. I want to make sure you like Paer Rolfe, even though I can't stand him myself."

"Why should I like the man whose aid of the natives in the Wildlands may have resulted in my great grandson's death?"

"Because that's not it."

"What isn't?"

"That isn't the reason you haven't given up your secret, so it isn't important. I don't think you care about what Paer Rolfe did. You didn't so much a glare at him the entire time he was in your office."

That was all Simon wanted, then, to see how Johann would react to Rolfe's presence. He never intended for Rolfe to stay in the meeting at all. Johann almost cursed himself for not having considered this point sooner.

"There is something you care about, though," Simon said. "That's why we're here—to figure out what that is and build it for you. If, at the end, you prefer to honor your contract with Nibelectric, I won't be surprised."

When Johann did not move to take another sip from his coffee, Simon stood abruptly and walked to the door, taking long strides that prevented Johann from feigning any attempt to show him out.

"I will be seeing you around, Doctor Bugenhagen."

As Simon paused at the door, Johann truly looked at him for the first time—not just the ghost fluff of a mustache, but the boy himself. He was short, no doubt, but so was Johann. His perfect part in the center of his head sent two leafs of hair silting over his ears. He looked well fed, not soft, but he had wide shoulders, broad back muscles. If the rest of him did not appear limp and privileged, Johann would guess he worked out with weights on his shoulders.

Johann nodded to him curtly and frowned. "I don't doubt it, Boy. Nothing I do will change the way the ice has frozen over up North, will it?"

When Simon closed the door, Johann allowed himself a small chuckle into his coffee. He didn't much like young men who thought they could fool him.

At least Jonathan's boy didn't seem to be one of them.

* * *

Paer hardly recognized Gold Nation when they arrived by ferry in Harborton, but not much at all had changed. Harborton still smelt of the fish guts thrashed into basins under card tables. The shoulders of roads still peppered by sacks of fertilizer. Men still passed pennies through their coat sleeves instead of shaking hands. Yet when people looked at him, they knew him—not Paer Rolfe, but a giant man still wearing Pheonix feathers around his neck, still smelling faintly of madroon, and still speckled orange from the roughage of Wildlands. Icicle's dark days had not sapped the stains on his skin completely.

When a man in a tweed jacket stamped his passport and read his name, he spat in Paer's face. Paer did not respond except to tug his own sleeve to wipe the saliva off his cheek.

Others did not outright attack Paer, but they suspected who he was or at least where he had come from by his refusal to remove the string of feathers from his neck and his general stature. Word of the traitor, he found, had spread through letters from the Wildlands to Gold. He kept his shaking hand tucked in his pockets and walked through town with his head bowed.

Catherine, who had arranged to accompany them, appeared to find the entire charade entertaining. She whispered his name out the side of her mouth to insight crowds, leaving heel marks in the dirt and tossing her clanging bag of firearm parts—who carried such things through the street? Seriously—over her shoulder.

When they stopped in the hotel in Harborton—complete with turndown service and a smoking room—Catherine left a bouquet of pink Dahlias on his pillow. A lipstick mark emblazoned the index card tucked between the stems.

They did not stay long in Harborton, but Paer did not take this news in with relief. Regardless of where they traveled, anyone who had a hello for him would also have a bucket of ice water to slip down the back of his shirt—and that's being charitable.

One of the only actual physical changes to Gold Nation that Paer could use to explain his unease came yellow, feathered, and strapped to a rickshaw. Paer knew it as a rickshaw, but the driver called this one a cab, and he rode upon a chocobo instead of pulling it himself.

It was just as well, seeing as Paer could not imagine riding a man-powered rickshaw all the way to Nibelheim, and he remembered the birds of the Wildlands having enough strength and stamina to climb the mountains between the Wutai encampment and the land surrounding Fort Condor. Before he left, some of the soldiers had started catching them and using them to cross the terrain and gather intel. Since the fall of the Kjatas, the mountain range became safer to cross, and the chocobos made short work of the distance.

Simon had asked Paer if he wanted to stop in Reit Village on the way to Nibelheim. Catherine said she would be _fascinated_ to see the village where Paer grew up.

Paer had told them he would rather make good time to Nibelheim. But it did not matter, really. People knew him in Nibelheim about as well as they knew him in Reit. As soon as the three of them arrived, Catherine checked them into the hotel on the far left side of town. Randy, the Innkeeper, knew Paer's family. Reit village popped out ranchers and hunters. Paer's father would bring Battery Caps and Valron wings for trade with the coal miners.

When Randy glowered over the counter, Catherine Drake squeezed his hand and leaned forward so that Randy could see the Shinra badge hanging at her neckline. "Would you happen to have a room without those ghastly fake trees? I have a condition. They give me hives." She batted her lashes.

Randy's distaste didn't go away, but he did not object.

Paer thought it would be easier, then he thought it would be harder. When he had observed the reaction to his name off the ferry in Harborton, he had been surprised. It should not have surprised him. He should have suspected that every man and woman in Gold would treat him like a pariah, but he had not, and it stung. Immediately following the altercation, however, he glanced down alleyways, burrowed into his seat in the cab, and expected, at any moment, for a group of Gold citizens to flock from the shadows and blow him apart with fire materia.

They eventually arrived in Nibelheim, where people knew Paer, knew the Rolfes, and the Innkeeper did nothing but glower at him. Paer would prefer it if they attacked him. At least then they could arrest him, put him through his inevitable trial, and finish the dance.

After they dropped their bags, Simon took Paer, paraded him in front of Johannes Bugenhagen—at which point Paer began to wonder if he had been brought to Gold as some sort of tribute, rather than as an architect.

When Simon sent him to get "takeout" and reconvene with Catherine at the hotel, Paer felt certain that the marketplace represented the first and last place he wanted to visit. If anyone would try to roll him, it would be there, in the runaround by the well, where Nibelheim's denizens sold homecooking practically fried on the rocks there in the summer. Enough Gold Nation soldiers crawled the streets, enough parents who had lost their children—if he rushed in with his head up and didn't invite at least a rain of arrows, he should consider himself invincible.

Paer did not make it to the marketplace.

He heard the snapping of the stick outside the front entrance to the Nibelectric office building, nearly masked by the clicking of the deadlatch on the door. He did not have time to react before a miner's boot connected with his shin, the butt of a pickaxe found his gut, and something heavy found the back of his neck.

Paer's reflexes had him doubled and clutching his stomach while the imprint of the heavy object rang through the back of neck and up into his skull like Capparwire vines lit on fire. Another hit—this time connecting with the burning back of his head—sent him to the ground. Then the miner's boot was digging into one of his kidney's, and he couldn't breathe.

Light had faded to the sienna of sunset, and Paer craned his neck to make out the shapes of his assailants. He did not recognize either of the three men beyond grief, outrage, and gritted teeth. The one with the pickaxe left the bladed edge of the head hovering over Paer's eye. Paer tried to find purchase in the paved dirt, but the miner's boot fell down on the bridge of his knuckles.

"What the hell are you doing here, Rolfe?" The grunge in the voice made Paer taste gravel—or maybe that was just the dirt he ate when he fell.

"No place else to go."

With one man standing on his back, talking felt like peeling apart his ribcage.

The blade of the pickaxe left its perch above Paer's eye. The chain of the Shinra badge around Paer's neck tightened, then snapped.

"These Shinra have a lot of nerve, thinking some flimsy card stock's gonna' keep you safe. You better clear out of here before the Mayor figures out the man who killed his kid's around. And take off these goddamn—"

Paer felt the strain of the cord of Pheonix feathers around his neck, bucked against the pain in his hand, and shoved hard against the pair of feet on his back. The man standing there gave a yelp and toppled over, but Paer did not make it to his feet before the handle of the pickaxe found its way across his eyes and the bridge of his nose.

He would definitely feel it in the morning.

* * *

Catherine had wanted to follow Paer and Simon to Nibelheim as a means of betting against Tuesti, Gast, and their pet Ancient. She felt like she was racing them, and maybe Tuesti had a foot in the door, and all Simon had was an old man with a fake secret, but his was the only game in town.

She had not, however, predicted the amount of distaste she would have for this continent.

Gold Nation would not shine if Catherine took a lump of wax to it. Of course, if she did that, the wax would find its way under her nails, and she didn't quite fancy—

Nibelheim. It had its share of dirt and dirt-coverd things, men with dirty faces, muddy boots dragging dirt over filthy foyers. The men in Harborton smelled of fish. The men in Nibelheim smelled of dirt and coal. She swore the Sun did not even come out because the dirt had covered the sky.

Grittles powered by coal hissed, but the mud on the surfaces masked the smell of happily sizzling grease. Catherine looked away from smokey faces, kept her head high, tried not to let her heels get bogged down by dirt.

Under the well that marked the center of Nibelheim, Catherine found a weapon's stand. A knives stand, more specifically. Catherine, more often than not, found herself attracted to the burgeoning field of firepower, but she could appreciate a decent blade, concealed at the hip, poised over the throat of a fat man wearing red.

Especially a stiletto.

Catherine ran her index finger over a double-edge blade nearly as thin as the aforementioned appendage. She inspected the leather strap around the hilt and wondered how it might look hung about her neck, the blade tucked under her bra, between her breasts.

"That's a stiletto," the man behind the card table said, "V-42. Seven and a half inches."

So maybe seven and a half inches was a little too long to tuck into her bra.

Catherine's attention snapped to the vendor and away from the knife for a small second. Quite young, she noted. He sported a trimmed beard and mustache. His cracked leather jacket had a kerchief hanging sloppily from his pocket, stained yellow. Not very clean; she did not fancy touching him any time soon.

"How much?"

The man raised a brow. "A purchase from a Shinra liaison? Isn't that a little…?"

He had a curious, quiet way of speaking. His accent cleaved every word with more than one syllable. Surely he did not hail from Nibel. He could not be a trader from a nearby village either. Almost everyone in Gold had that same, smooth speech that made Catherine feel as if they spat smoke clouds into her ears.

"Who said I was buying it?" Catherine licked her lips.

The man leaned over the table and smashed his thumb over the hilt of the blade. "Your eyes did."

Catherine's fingers retreated to her mouth to cover her laughter. "Of _course_ they did. Marvelous. Very well, what's the price?"

The vendor eyed her badge—no name, just the elegant Shinra rhombus on white card stock hanging from a beaded chain.

"I'm not sure the price in Sno…"

Catherine waved his concerns away. "Not to worry. I have Phyrrus." She reached into her bag—no longer bulky and full of gun cylinders and springs—and pulled out a stack of thick, round coins. Phyrrus always had a too-slick feel, like running her hand through Jonathan Shinra's groomed and trimmed beard.

The stack clanged onto the table, and Catherine gestured to the vendor to suggest that he should help himself. He took three—sixty Phyrrus. Catherine thought the blade was worth at least eighty.

"Where do you make these?" Catherine snatched the stiletto from the table before the vendor could change his mind. She ran her finger along one of the bladed edges with just enough pressure to feel it tear the first layer of skin. Steel was cold, clean—not at all like the man who sold it.

"The woods."

"Indeed?" Catherine fingered her lapel. Her eyes flickered once more to the man's face. He appeared bored and impassive. One transaction, completed, meant the end of their conversation. "I suppose you wouldn't take me to meet the craftsmen?"

"You suppose correctly."

Catherine dug the blade further into her index finger, drawing blood. She did her best to avoid narrowing her eyes. "I could have you followed."

At this, Catherine managed to evoke the first true expression from the man. His lips curled, and he leaned even further across the table. "I am sure, Doctor Drake, you wouldn't succeed."

For a moment, she smelled pine, some sort of berry, dare she say _urine_,and then nothing. She looked down at the table, where her stack of coins remained, and noticed that two more were missing.

"The price went up?"

"Consider it payment for information."

At that moment, a rough finger prodded Catherine's lower back. She craned her neck to glare at the woman behind her, carrying a satchel full of brown cheese and corn bread. Her fingers were covered in dirt, and Catherine had a mind to demand she pay to have her suit cleaned.

"Excuse me, Miss, but I've been waiting to look at the buck knives."

Catherine felt the man pressing the greasy stack of Phyrrhus back into her hand and closing her fingers. She took a moment to look back at him.

"Yes, Doctor, please make room for other customers."

She dropped the coins in her bag. Then she snatched the knife from the table and hung the leather strap from the chain on her Shinra badge. Catherine made sure the vendor saw it before she stalked off in search of a tall tree or a ledge on the well behind which she could seek cover.

It was a declaration of war, whether the man behind the card table saw it that way or not.

* * *

Most men of Paer's irascible nature had learned to take a beating at a young age. Then, of course, he had never been good at defensive training. Most significantly, he had lived inside a mountain where large men—many of whom never wore shirts because their muscles would bust through them—sometimes felt the urge to pummel or interrogate him under suspicions of treachery. Paer wouldn't say he was comfortable with spitting up blood, but he supposed he was about as close to it as one could get.

* * *

When Johann rolled out of bed the next day, hobbling out the front door, and leaning heavily on his cane, he found a notice posted on the front of his apartment summoning him to the mayor's office at ten in the morning. Someone could have told him about that. He would be fifteen minutes late. Certainly, they did not expect old men who did next to nothing in their offices all day to be ready to go to work on time?

In either case, Johann, no regard for the pressing nature of the summons, managed to limp his way over to the mayor's home. It was not the most grandiose of homes, but it had a floor over almost every building in the city except the Inn.

Mayor Lockheart had three children: one boy who had died in the war about the same time Johann lost his great grandson, yet another boy, and a girl who spent most of their time running around the market, knocking over barrels of turnips, and generally annoying all easily ruffled old men. Their screeching never ended, and he found them as spoiled as cabbage in May.

Or perhaps he just despised children, having none left in the world to call his own.

He found them out front, digging divets with chipped spades and recovering them for no clear purpose beyond messing the walk. His cane sunk into one of them, and the girl squealed with joy, tossing her hair behind her head.

"What are you doing here, Doctor Bugenhagen?" the boy asked, elbowing his sister in the side.

"Mayor Lockheart summoned me."

"Weird, what do you have to do with the traitor?"

"The traitor?"

"Yeah, they're talking about what to do with him. Pop's _real_ mad. I 'member. He said 'Iffn' Paer Rolfe ever found Nibelheim, I'd take glee executing him myself,' but the Shinra types say he has mutiny."

"Mutiny?"

"Carla, he said ammunity."

"Immunity," Johann corrected absently, massaging his mustache. "He has immunity as a liaison from Icicle."

"I's pretty sure Pop said mutiny."

"I'm sure he did at one point or another." Johann sighed. Why should the Mayor bother to involve him in this? He would rather wash his hands of the entire mess, go to his office, scribble equations, and feel miserable. Instead, he had to interrupt his routine, straining his legs at the Mayor's home, and speaking to children possessed by Hades.

Inside the foyer, Mayor Lockhart's wife had decorated the walk with a red, floral-printed rug, paintings of Azaleas, and enough mahogany to choke a woodpecker. The secretary had a pressed rose in her collar, and she directed Johann down a hallway on the right. She had the nerve to suggest he need an escort.

Who needed a stiff, hollow headed escort, when one could have a stiff, hollow pummeled cane?

As Johann neared the mahogany door with a plaque which read "Mayor Lockhart," he heard Simon Shinra's patient voice. The voice of a boy who thinks he's at least eighty seven.

Johann caught himself smiling. Then he scowled to cover it.

"I'm sorry, Mayor Lockhart, that you feel we have insulted you. Icicle Inn does not dare betray the trust you have forged between—"

"You can stop your simpering, Boy. We know all about the ambassador Jonathan Shinra sent to Wutai."

"You have to understand that our company wants to keep a neutral reputation. They requested information on our products, so we sent a liaison. Nothing more. I'm afraid, however, that this matter has nothing at all to do with Mister Rolfe, who—"

"_My boy is dead because of him_!"

Johann felt the following silence would represent his best moment to enter. He cleared his throat and rapped upon the door to Mayor Lockhart's office. When no one responded, Johann decided it best to let himself in. One of the only positive things about being old was that he could use his age as an excuse for being where he didn't belong. "Oh, excuse me, I couldn't quite hear the shouting, I thought I would just let myself in." That kind of thing.

Unlike the hallway, Mayor Lockhart's office had a green theme. Green wallpaper. Pictures of conifers. A pickaxe mounted on the wall, green paint splattered from the hilt onto the head to indicate that Mayor Lockhart had likely had it painted for his office after its assembly.

Simon Shinra's smile nearly covered his hint of a mustache, while Mayor Lockhart's temple throbbed. The man tried to keep the lines of his smile straight, but the hint of an angry frown caused the right corner to droop.

"Hello, Doctor Bugenhagen," Simon said. "It's good to see you again."

Then he mouthed 'I'm so sorry' and leaned back in a green puff chair, tilting a glass of water.

Mayor Lockhart forced his hands in his pockets. "Can I get you something to drink, Doctor Bugenhagen. Coffee?"

"No, thank you, I'm sure I'll wake up on my own soon. I'm old, not deaf. Continue discussing your problem."

"Paer Rolfe was beaten out front of Nibelectric last night," Simon said before The Mayor could begin shouting again. "Several of his ribs were broken, he acquired a fairly severe concussion, and I came to the Mayor last night to discuss implementing some security measures. He hasn't been—accommodating."

The Mayor snorted.

Johann could not deny Mayor Lockhart's right to be outraged. According to reports from The Wildlands, Paer Rolfe's defection came inexplicably and unexpectedly. His joining of some sort of tribe which worshiped some sort of bird compromised the integrity of the Base of Operations which he had constructed and allowed him to steal valuable weapons and supplies for an enemy. Under normal circumstances, Johann doubted he would even have a trial before an execution.

But now Paer Rolfe belonged to Shinra. For all intents and purposes, so did the entire nation of Gold.

While Rolfe's defection had strengthened the native element, Gold continued to emerge victorious in almost every encounter against the forces of Wutai and Mideel: the main opponent of the war. The Drake weapons made that possible. They said men could use materia found over the years and collected by wealthy men as oddities to command the elements themselves against enemies, to make nearly dead men leap from the infirmary and walk again.

If the people of Nibelheim killed a Shinra liaison, the relationship which made Gold stronger than it ever was before might suffer.

"Where is Mister Rolfe now?" Johann squeezed his cane and scanned the room for an empty chair. This could be a taxing conversation.

"Nibelheim Hospice," Simon said.

"Well, then, I'm sure a nurse with a syringe of morphine has already ended the matter for us."

"He's under Doctor Drake's watch."

Johann raised a brow. "Doctor Catherine Drake, you say? I suppose she has a brightly colored name tag and everything. Well, if there's one person in the world who might save Paer Rolfe from an assassin, it's her."

He wondered if that was the very reason Jonathan Shinra had sent Doctor Drake to Nibelheim.

"Well, what can an old man like me do for you? Bore you with my experiences? I'm sure you'll disregard them."

Mayor Lockhart sighed. "Simon Shinra claims he and his group have come to our lovely town to build you a house."

Johann pursed his lips. He looked from Mayor Lockhart's pulsing temple to Simon's sincere, pandering face.

"I know I turned down coffee, but is it too early for brandy?" Johann mumbled.

"Excuse me?" Simon asked. "I'm sorry, but I didn't catch that."

"That's what they tell me." Johann cleared his throat. "They're here to build me a giant house."

"That's what they—tell you." The Mayor sat down at his desk and crossed his legs.

"My old man purchased a plot of land, Mister Mayor, as you know." Simon folded his hands in his sleeves. "He desires to expand into Gold Nation, not least so that we can continue our mutually beneficial partnership. A partnership with Nibelectric would also be a very integral part of it."

"You're trying to poach Doctor Bugenhagen," Mayor Lockhart said. "I've heard."

"Not in this case. We're just here to give him a gift so as—"

"What does this have to do with Paer Rolfe?"

"My father would like him to build it for us, as well as the new Shinra branch. After all, you can say many things about Paer Rolfe, but that he is a bad architect, well. I don't think anyone would say that."

"There are many good architects in Gold Nation," Mayor Lockhart said. "Many I would prefer, many that would not _insult_ my people."

"But Doctor Bugenhagen insists—"

Johann laughed. Long, low, loudly, gripping his cane and nearly falling forward. "I _insisted_, did I? To think, Boy, I was actually considering liking you."

"You mean to say you _didn't_ request Paer Rolfe?" Mayor Lockhart demanded.

Simon's eyes widened. All his false years dropped, and his lower jaw sagged. "You told us that it had to be him."

Johann cleared his throat. "I said nothing of the sort."

Simon stood, leaned forward, and gripped the glass of water so hard Johann thought he heard it creak. "You said only Paer Rolfe—"

"It doesn't matter what Doctor Bugenhagen did or did not insist upon," The mayor said, pursing his lips.

Simon glared at Johann. He could not possibly have expected Johann to agree to his insane scheme. Even then, he over-estimated Johann's worth to this town. It puzzled him that, after all his calm honesty in the office the day before, a lie and the life of a man he professed no interest in could unnerve him so.

Boys will be puzzles.

"The best way to resolve this issue so as to uphold law would be for Paer Rolfe to complete his assignment for Shinra Manufacturing Works," Lockhart continued, unperturbed, as if he required an outburst from someone else to notice how childishly he had been behaving. "After that, I think we can work something out. We'll allow him protection here, including armed guards, if we can agree that, once his assignment is complete, Paer Rolfe remains in Nibelheim and faces a trial for his crimes against Gold Nation."

The armed guard, Johann supposed, would exist in name only, as he doubted anyone in Nibel would willingly serve.

"Paer Rolfe is on retainer at Shinra." Simon's nostrils flared. "That isn't going to work."

"Boy," Johann grumbled, "this is the best deal you're going to get."

"_Fine_," Simon snapped. Then he crossed his arms. Johann remembered when his two year olds would do that. "You have a deal. Paer Rolfe builds the Nibelheim branch of Shinra Manufacturing Works, and you can burn him."

Then Simon forced himself from the green desk chair, slammed the glass of sloshing water on Mayor Lockhart's desk, and stalked from the office.

Lockhart licked his lips. "They send Paer Rolfe, they negotiate contracts with Wutai, but perhaps the most insulting thing Jonathan Shinra has done so far is send a fifteen year old boy to represent him."

Johann coughed. "Have you met Jonathan Shinra?" He preferred Simon so far.

"Did you really ask for Rolfe as architect?"

"They didn't consult me about this one way or the other."

"Like I said, it doesn't matter." Mayor Lockhart opened a file on his desk. He lifted a mahogany pen. The green decals on its side matched the painting of a conifer mounted behind the Mayor's chair. "The fact that people might believe it for a moment is damning enough."

* * *

Cloves. Paer smelled them and knew he was in an infirmary of some kind. They practically filled the air ducts with those things in Junon—at least, that's why he reasoned the air always felt so heavy.

When he breathed, snapped parts of his ribcage bit his lungs. His skull throbbed. His fingers had to be broken. At least he could blame the tearing on the cloves.

Paer tried to tilt his head and hissed. The pain jolted all down his spine like steel clothespins on his vertebrae.

"You're awake. Marvelous."

Venturing a peek out his left eye, Paer spotted Catherine Drake, wearing her red suit jacket, her legs crossed, hands folded on her lap over a pistol, and her hair twisted up like crullers. Catherine sat on a black stool by his bed. When she smiled, things seemed to hurt a little less.

Then he tried to smile back, and that ruined _everything_.

"You see, I would call the nurse over, but she's been looking daggers at you all day. Luckily, I brought my Carridge." Catherine stroked the barrel of her pistol. "So she doesn't get close enough."

"Painkillers?" The irony of the jab through his ribs when he asked for relief didn't go unnoticed.

"I'm afraid I don't think that's the best idea until the meeting is over."

"Meeting?"

Paer's eyes wandered as well as they could without moving his head and causing himself more pain. Brick walls held up the wooden slats of the roof. Nibelheim buildings were either made from mud or stone: two things the locals could find in abundance. From his scope of vision, he estimated that twenty beds filled the single room he recovered in—probably the only room in the building. He spotted a patient across from him with gauze covering his eyes. Deliberate, he suspected. The only moron who wouldn't attack him was a blind one.

"The meeting between Simon and the Mayor to decide whether or not you should be killed." Catherine reached her hand to wipe the hair from Paer's eyes. Her hands, despite calluses, long nails, chill, and her words felt remarkably gentle.

"Great. Well, what's the point? Might as well let the nurse at me."

Catherine frowned. "_That_ attitude is horrid. And here I was, just about to tell you of the magnificent discovery I'd made in the Well Market today."

"Well Market?" Paer wished he had thought of it first, but he wasn't going to admit it.

Catherine batted her hand at him. "Oh, you know, the Market around the well. I think I've found _assassins_."

Paer sighed and added that to the mounting list of gestures he could not make with broken ribs. From the few conversations he had had with Catherine, it seemed likely that pressing her wouldn't force her to make sense.

Her hand snuck in front of Paer's vision, and she snapped twice. "Excuse me, I'm talking to you."

"'Course," Paer said. "I was paying attention. Just waiting for you to keep going."

"Well, the details can wait." She stood from her stool so she could lean over him. Paer smelled the perfume she always wore to cover the smell of gunpowder. As far he could tell, she bathed in both. It left a stated charm that made her relatable. He didn't fit in society, and she didn't know how to do so. "Let's just say I'm awaiting your recovery so you can take me there."

Her hands fluttered to his, folded in gauze at his stomach. Paer gritted his teeth against the urge to cry out. "Don't you want to see them, Mister Rolfe? The men who live in the forest and worship Hades."

Paer had heard about the tribe of men who lived in the forests of Gold Nation. Thirty years before he was born, there was a rumor that they were trained assassins of the previous Monarchy. When the last king was deposed, the Aristocracy ordered all men who worshipped Hades hunted down and murdered; the forests near Costa del Sol burned in rashes of flame until the once green land became a parched plane.

"They're dead."

"Well, so are you, isn't that so? You're a dead man. That's what the meeting is about."

Paer had little he could say to that. He let his aching jaw hang and looked away from her.

The fingers snapped in Paer's face again. Catherine's thin fingers gripped his jaw and forced him to look at her. She had leaned even further over his bed so that he could smell her breath as well as her perfume. Rhubarb. She ate it raw and with gusto.

"What makes you so sure ya know where they are?" Paer asked.

"Ah." Catherine's eyes gained a new luster as she fumbled under the lapels of her suit. At length, she pulled out her Shinra badge, and Paer saw a seven inch knife dangling on a chain from the cord. He would ask her how she managed to hide that under her suit, but thought it best not to learn too much about how the minds of pretty women worked. They tended to be unsavory places.

"And?" he asked.

"He was selling these." Her finger ran to the hilt. A leather hilt had four marbles set. Three evenly spaced at the edges and center of the quillion, and the fourth at the base of the hilt. "You see the four orange lamps, yes? It was on all of his merchandise."

Paer chewed the inside of his cheek. "There can be no question." He did his best not to sound sarcastic. It never boded well to openly sass Catherine. She would clack off in a huff. In this situation, that could prove fatal for him.

She rolled her eyes. "Honestly, Mister Rolfe, you're too easily convinced. There's more."

Paer felt a pang in his shoulder blade when he began to lift his arm to scratch behind his head. Old habits die hard.

"You see, the vendor was very rude to me, so I hid behind the well and thought to spy on him. He was very guarded about where he was from. With good reason, of course. So I sat and watched"—here Catherine crouched beside Paer's bed for a moment to illustrate her hiding position—"over the side of the well. In an hour or so, a couple others appeared, and they both had small parcels. One of them put his down near me, and when they were busy with customers I scurried over and wedged my nose inside. It had a long red robe in it. You know the kinds with the hoods that used to be in all the old drawings of Hades? The man at the stand had a parcel just like it, and I'll bet you anything they _all_ had robes like that inside."

Still not convinced, Paer tried to feign interest. "Well, that's amazing, isn't it? I thought for sure they'd all died out."

"I never believed it." Catherine dismissed him with a wave of her hand. "Why would a forest fire destroy men who could sneak into the bed chambers of the most celebrated Costa royals? We must meet them, Mister Rolfe. They are in the forest, I wager. Up in the mountains, perhaps. They certainly looked filthy enough."

"I promise I'll take you, Katie." Paer tried to give her a reassuring pat. Raising his arm as high as he could without biting off his bottom lip. "As long as the Mayor doesn't kill me first."

Catherine's excitement wilted for a moment. She found a seat at the edge of Paer's bed and looked away from him. "That would be unfortunate, wouldn't it?"

For the first time, Paer took a moment to really think about being executed in Nibelheim. He had thought about the shame, being afraid someone might jump him, but not about actually dying. It seemed different from how he had imagined the possibility of dying on the Wildlands. More civilized, somehow. You take a man and say "This is for what you did to everyone in this city," then you shoot him or chop off his head or something of the sort. It's clean and easy. No one cries but the young ones who don't understand fair's fair.

Paer didn't much like civilized.

"I'm sure Simon won't let anything happen." Catherine sighed. "If there's one thing Shinra has here, it's power. You're one of us now."

Even in Wildlands before he defected, Paer had not been 'one of' anything. He wasn't a soldier, just a man with blueprints and a lot of muscle. Paer got the same sense from Shinra Manufacturing Works. Everyone seemed to have the capability to do one thing, and that made for little comraderie. Simon hardly spoke on the ferry to Harborton.

But he had a contract. Paer had a small sense of what that meant, and he had apparently underestimated its power.

"I came here to avoid death. I didn't want people from Gold to bite it, and I couldn't stand it if Abner croaked. So I guess I took the first job without thinking and roll for it. Hardly seems fair, does it?"

"It might help"—Catherine had swiveled back around; her index finger found its way to the cord of Phoenix feathers still tied around Paer's neck—"if you took this off."

"It wouldn't help at all, and you know it."

"It provokes them." Catherine sighed and fluffed ringlets of her hair with her free hand. "Are you so loyal to those birds?"

"Don't think that's it." Paer admitted he had no reason to have reacted when the miners who attacked him had reached for his lanyard of Phoenix feathers. He felt a great amount of loyalty to the last bird, but he doubted it could sense one way or the other whether he kept wearing its plumage—if it cared in the first place, which he doubted.

"Even the Hades men take off their robes in town."

Paer chuckled and coughed from the pain. "I guess that makes them a might smarter than me, yeah?"

Catherine leaned away from Paer so she could swing one of her stilettoed feet onto the bed beside Paer's head. She stretched her fingers from the knee to the ankle, leaving her nose a few inches from her bare lower thigh. When she caught Paer sneaking a glance out the corner of his eyes, she grinned.

"That was never the question, Mister Rolfe."

* * *

_Please review._


	8. Chapter 7: Blast from the Last

**Chapter 7: Blast from the Last**

Though Erda fancied the freedom of long cargo ship cruises, the bottles of bourbon, shes selling sea shells—not exactly by the sea shore—there was something to be said for coming home. The comfort of the frosty shores of Icicle made her feel almost human. She had wandered this continent for two thousand years, learning every remedy for frost bite, navigating the Sleeping Forest, picking along the rocks of the great crater.

Energy frothing at the pole of the world still soothed her, but she had forsaken it for thin alcohol and fat down comforters.

When the cargo docked at the travel center in Icicle, Erda made the decision to ignore her immediate appointment with Jonathan Shinra and the Shinra building all together, but her jaunt home left her in close proximity to her place of work. She drew up several yards away, nearly dropped her handbag, and felt her head turning against her will toward the massive steel building at the corner of Main and Styx.

The Planet was hissing.

_Hissing_.

Viper coiled in the center of its core hissing.

Erda could not make out a single intelligible word, and she wondered if that had more to do with the liquored cotton balls she had used to stop up her inner ear or extreme distress removing its comprehension of the current language—_did _it comprehend the current language?

Whatever caused the hissing, Erda felt certain it had to do with her place of work. She heaved a sigh, shrugged, and continued her trudge home.

The resulting squeal sent Erda's head throbbing and her knees buckling such that she found herself with the palms of her hands in the snow and her suit pants caught in the slush.

"Human Gods love you, Mother," Erda grumbled. "When you want something, you get it. Don't unleash the Weapons; I'm going."

Erda staggered to her feet, stamping her little brown bag, and still clutching her temples. She bent down and snatched up the bag, but did not bother brushing off her knees. No one expected her to be presentable anyway.

As Erda trotted up the steps, the hissing dulled. Her feet shuffled down the halls, past the green plants like beacons of The Planet's distaste and ventured to the Drake Labs, the hissing leading her as if she were attached to puppet wires. As she stumbled, she fiddled with her hair, pulling against the ache inside her skull.

Erda came to a halt as the hissing ceased outside a heavy steel door with a small square glass window. She clutched her purse close to her chest and stood on her toes to peer through the opening.

The hissing began again, but this time from her lips: an involuntary intake of breath. On the steel table was a woman's body, covered in marbled blue flesh. Erda had never seen it in that form before, but she knew exactly what it was.

It's coming again. I need you.

She wasn't kidding.

Erda fell back down on her heels and fumbled for the latch on the door. Locked. Humans like to lock their doors—that was the entire point of doors! To keep people—things—out.

She ran her fingers through her hair, messing the recently tightened bun and tapped her foot. Something. She could do something, couldn't she?

As her fingers came in contact with the sharp wooden stick in her hair, she snatched it suddenly, letting her bun fall in complete disarray. The other stick clattered to the floor, but she ignored it and tried to jam the implement she had grasped between the lock plate and the strike.

Of course, it snapped in half. She threw the two pieces to the floor and kicked the base of the door in frustration. Then she took a deep breath and counted to ten.

Guilt reared its ugly head first. The Planet had entrusted her with one simple task in the past two thousand years—keep the damn thing in The Sleeping Forest. Make sure the humans don't get too close. Somehow, the humans had managed to get into the Forest, dig around, and pull out the reason for all the sleeping.

Erda did not even think that was supposed to be possible. Her presence there seemed overkill when, if anyone managed to enter The Sleeping Forest, they got lost forever or got spat out, disoriented and positively mad.

Then it occurred to her that, even if she managed to break into the laboratory, she could do nothing about the situation. If The Calamity could not move from its spot—if it remained in a weakened state—it did so because it could not lock onto any of The Planet's energy. Humans blocked themselves up. Unless it could get direct access to the flow of Lifestream under their skins, it could not get direct access to any life energy at all, but Erda—

Her people didn't even know what doors were until humans came along.

Erda crossed her arms and leaned against the wall to the right of the lab's entrance. She slid all the way to the floor and tapped her right foot when her rear end hit the ground. Then she fumbled in her purse for her small twelve ounce bottle of bourbon before she remembered that she had downed it all right before she left the cargo ship.

"Miss Tinning?"

Erda did her best to wring the scowl from her face before she craned her neck to meet the eyes of the man who had called her name. Faremis Gast. Short. Bottle brush mustache. Wore a lab coat that bubbled around the shoulders. Far too interested in The Sleeping Forest and the Ancients. That summed it up.

She should have assumed he would be involved.

"Hello, Doctor Gast. I had heard about your—err, discovery, and I became interested, so I ventured down here, but then I found I couldn't get in the door and decided to wait for you."

Gast's eyes lit up. He pushed his glasses up his nose and rubbed his hands together. "It pleases me very much that you're interested in my research, Miss Tinning. If you'd like to see Jenova—"

Erda bolted from where she sat. "Oh my! I didn't realize what time it was. I have a meeting with President Shinra, and I'm already late. Perhaps we can discuss it over coffee today? I'll meet you in the café in an hour."

"I suppose…"

Erda did not wait for him to finish his sentence. She bolted down the hall in a blind panic, practically swimming through the air.

* * *

Outside the Shinra building, Kane Tuesti sat on a stone bench, scribbling on a crossword puzzle and whiling away his lunch break. Since Catherine Drake and Simon Shinra left, he had felt on edge. He felt as if his life took place in every continent exempting the one upon which he resided. His wife sat sick in Mideel. His people moved forward in Wutai. Drake and Shinra Junior looked for ways to force him from the company in Gold. In the middle of it all, a war was being fought. High stakes. It could determine whether or not he would ever go home.

In Icicle, Kane supervised a project his pupil had overtaken and was failing to make headway on while he foraged for a seven letter word for "to worry about excessively" as snowflakes stilled on the breeze, and drifts buried his nice leather boots.

Kane scribbled "belabor" on his crossword as he heard the thrusting open of the doors, racing of feet, and an abrupt halt. He put down his crossword and turned from his point on the bench to see Erda Tinning, wearing her form-fitting brown suit, doubled over, and drinking in air like someone had recently been holding her under water.

"Miss Tinning?" Kane began to stand.

Erda stood straight, became the icicle the trading continent gained its name for, and almost stopped breathing completely. Her eyes flicked to Kane, and she raised her hands behind her head to straighten her hair. "It's fascinating, how you science types are always unsure of my name."

"Excuse me," Kane said and bowed his head.

"For what?" Erda still did not look at him. She rubbed at her knees, which Kane noticed appeared to have gotten drenched. "Doctor Tuetsi, I spent several weeks in Wutai. I'm tired of self shame and misery without cause. Do straighten up."

Kane, still halfway between sitting and standing, decided to resume his seat. Erda Tinning always had the effect of unbalancing him. He assumed that she intended this result and had widespread success.

Erda stalked over to the bench and fwumped down beside him. She fumbled in her purse and removed a cigar, waving it like a prize, and a match. In a second, she had lit her cigar and leaned back comfortably on the bench as if the cold of the stone required no adjustment whatsoever.

Kane did not know a single person more at home in Icicle than Erda Tinning. She never seemed to get cold.

"Was Jonathan pleased with the results of your trip?"

Erda waved the cigar about. "Who knows? I suppose I'll find out. I doubt it, but he'll learn it's for the best."

"I take it they didn't bite."

"I asked for too much money."

Kane gave her a half smile. "This is why Jonathan Shinra shot himself in the foot when he picked you to head PR."

Erda licked her lips. "I'm not nearly as big of a mistake as you are. What is that _thing_ your assistant has in Drake's lab?"

"The future of Shinra Manufacturing Works," Kane said. He studied her face. She seemed visibly distressed. Her eyebrows twitching, her right leg pumping up and down, propelled by the ball of her foot shuffling on the stone. "Or Faremis' ticket to my job."

Erda threw her elbows back over the top of the bench. A puff of smoke issued from her cigar and rose to dirty the white sky. "Try to be less bitter about it. You're getting old, you know."

Kane sighed. Sometimes conversing with Erda Tinning only drew him in circles. "You're right, I suppose. He did make a great discovery. He worked with a musician at the Institute to make a harp—instructions in the old writings from the excavation. Then he dug deeper and further into the forest, and found her. He managed to find an _Ancient_, and here I am, only concerned with my job—"

Erda quite suddenly doubled over, choking on the smoke from her cigar and guffawing between gasps for air. "An"—she slammed her chest with her fist—"Anicent?" When she stopped laughing, she took another puff from her cigar. "That is something, isn't it? What is she going to do, then, be old all over the table?"

"Miss Tinning"—Kane's eyebrows furrowed; he turned to try to address her, but she remained facing away from him—"we found her in a box buried below the ground, and her heart is still beating. Do you know what this means for my research in bioengineering? A living motor that _can't die_."

Erda scratched her chin, the cigar bobbing in the air from her fingertips. "So it is still your project, correct? He's working from your idea. It sounds to me like all that boy did was play a harp and tell people to dig." She patted Kane on the shoulder and stamped out her cigar.

"I am supervising, and I don't have ideas—"

"Ah, but shouldn't you be in the thick of it?" Finally, Erda pivoted where she sat. She gripped his upper arm and pursed her lips. "You should have full control. It's your project. After all, you know what you're doing more than a student, don't you? It's your job to protect him from himself."

"Protect him from himself?"

"From ruining his career, yes." Erda rolled her eyes and looked unhappily at her now unlit cigar. "I always do that," she mumbled absently.

"Always do what?"

"Get excited and ruin a good cigar before it's quite ready. Neither here nor there. The point is"—she shook Kane's shoulder—"it's your rear on the line, isn't it, Doctor Tuetsi?"

"I appreciate the suggestion, but—"

The light grasp became a stiff squeeze. Erda's eyes narrowed. All hints of joviality vanished. "_Tuesti_," she breathed, "for once in your life, grab an opportunity. I am sick of your moping, your caution, your false Wutai misery keeping you from important things. But it is your _caution_ that this project needs, that Faremis doesn't have. You just found this thing. You don't know what it's capable of."

Kane cleared his throat. "What it's capable of? It's heart is barely beating."

"Reverence, Tuesti," Erda said. "I know you have it. Rein the boy in."

Abruptly, Erda removed her hand from Kane's shoulder. He felt himself rock forward. She rolled up her sleeve as if to check a watch, but she wasn't wearing one. "I have some things to attend to," she said. "I'll see you in Jonathan's office in—an hour and a half, let's say? Can you pass along the message to his secretary? He told me to meet him when I got back in."

She bustled down the walk before Kane had a chance to respond.

Kane scratched his chin and clenched the crossword, hearing the crinkle. He licked his lips. Something about Jenova had upset Erda. He had never seen her disturbed, and she seemed to have been shaking, though she had attempted to cover it with wild gestures.

If pressed, Kane would guess the idea of working on something sentient had rattled her. She had used the word reverence. \By all accounts, the Ancients in the text were highly intelligent and spiritual. Perhaps she had a point, but that would be a battle he would have to fight with both Jonathan Shinra and Faremis. Maybe, since Kane was feeling avenues of progress melt away anyway, he could at least use her concerns to stall.

Kane knew himself well enough to know he didn't have the spine for that.

Maybe Erda would do it for him.

* * *

Erda could only vaguely account for her activities over the hour between her conversation with Tuesti and her coffee meeting with Gast. She had gone to her penthouse, thrown off her suit for a paisley shirt and some slacks not smelling of barges or the incontinent cat which belonged to the captain.

Not having a bandersnatch at home made it feel more lonely, but so did living so far above ground she couldn't feel The Planet barefoot.

After making herself a pot of coffee, Erda recalled she would be going out _for_ coffee, dumped half of it down the sink before shrugging and pouring herself a red mugful anyway. The mug was red because she had "borrowed" it from Jonathan Shinra the same way she had borrowed this new, bandersnatch and Planet free life.

Erda confessed she liked coffee because it always tasted vaguely of dirt. She couldn't change everything, but she could throw kahlua at it. Which she did. Before redoing her hair, grabbing a new cigar from the drawer, and slamming her door behind her.

Gast waited for Erda at Gavin's, which is where all Shinra employees meant by "coffee." Gavin put in an extra shot of espresso without having to be asked, played no music, and ran a generally deserted establishment, except for during lunch at Flask, which inaptly produced leather shoes and thick clogs. The company's president arranged a deal with Gavin for his employees to receive 10% off bagels and finger sandwiches. Gavin's had minimal decor: a handful of red paper lanterns, which Shinra employees also found desirable. Gavin himself rarely shaved and smelled of hazelnut.

A paper cup, steaming, rested between Gast's fists in front of him. He had a two inch high manila folder in front of the seat directly to his right. Erda supposed he wanted to go through at least part of it with her. She raised an eyebrow at it, made sure Gast saw, and waved to Gavin. He immediately started pouring her a cup of his darkest roast.

Erda sat down, pushed back in her chair, and left a handful of loose change on the table. Then she cleared her throat.

"Hello, Miss Tinning," Gast said, "did you have a pleasant voyage?"

"Yes," she said, "it was very pleasant. But I missed out here, didn't I?"

Gast beamed and flipped open the front of the manila folder. Erda tried to keep her face smooth as paper fluttered.

"The short version, please?" she said. "I'm not a scientist, you might recall. I just handwave through the hard parts and use vague terms like energy and life force. You'll excuse me."

Frowning, Gast closed the folder and leaned forward in his chair. It did not take long for his excitement to return. "We found her in The Sleeping Forest, as I said. She was asleep—still is asleep."

"What makes you sure she"—Erda licked her teeth, but she avoided calling The Calamity an 'it'—"'s an Ancient?"

Gast blinked four times, which Erda found excessively unnecessary. "What else would she be? She was dormant in a Forest enchanted by the Ancients, no doubt preserved from whatever wiped the rest of them out. There's no writing on what happened to them. The Ancients were long-lived, able to withstand a great deal of time's trappings. It can be nothing else."

Erda pursed her lips. Gast wasn't stupid. She had to agree. Even two thousand years later, she couldn't answer his question. She had no idea what it was.

Gast nodded. He seemed satisfied by her silence. He took a sip from his coffee as Gavin trotted over with Erda's, snatched up her over-generous tip, and left.

"From the preliminary tests, we've been able to determine that she heals quickly, and her heart rate has risen since we retrieved her from the ground, but so far we haven't been able to rouse her from her stasis. We're trying to sequence her DNA, but..."

As Gast continued to speak, gesturing wildly with his hands, Erda sucked on her tongue. She took a sip from her coffee and felt the inappropriate desire to laugh build up as pressure in her lungs. She took a long swallow. The Planet seemed surprisingly silent, perhaps because Erda had decided to have this meeting at all. She wondered just how conscious The Planet was of subtleties involved in meetings. Erda's mere presence implied she would do something about The Calamity. That was the contract.

Humans tore up contracts all the time.

"Unfortunately, the proteins are arranged—"

"Doctor Gast?"

"Yes, Miss Tinning?" His eyes shone at the direct address.

"If you had to give me a number, how many instructions would you say you have disobeyed in your lifetime?"

"Excuse me?"

"Just a number. Three? Fourteen? One hundred eighty seven? You can guess, but points for avoiding rounded digits."

Gast's eyes seemed to cross over. "I don't think that's really relevant at the moment."

"I just want to know. Scientists redefine rules, don't they? They invent them and break the ones that don't work anymore. If you had to guess, Doctor Gast."

"If you're counting instructions my parents have given me?"

"Of course, especially those."

"If you are asking for a number, I can't—"

"Doctor Gast, answer the question."

He gave a deep sigh and looked at his hands. He folded and unfolded the corner of his folder. "Fifty seven."

Erda narrowed her eyes. The number seemed large; Gast had a bottle brush mustache. But the sentiment sat. Humans broke rules. They didn't listen. They broke everything, and they meddled. They didn't get any headaches. The world didn't end.

Erda picked up her coffee—jerkily, she had been starting to get the shakes—and pushed her chair in. "Then here's an instruction you should heed. I don't care what else you do with Jenova"—Erda swallowed—"just keep it away from _me_."

She had lived long enough. If Jenova killed her, who cared? If the humans got punished, it was about time. Erda was tired of it—watching it, thinking about it, listening to The Planet scream at her about it. They had dug up The Calamity.

Let it Calam.

* * *

Kane Tuesti found himself facing off with Jonathan Shinra in his office once again. The President of Shinra Manufacturing Works fished out his lighting flask and fiddled with the lever of the stopcock, threatening to release a cache of flame. Kane tried not to wince at the click.

"She was to report to me as soon as she got in."

Kane couldn't help noticing that Jonathan Shinra seemed to pout as he contemplated the possibility that one of his pets had defied him.

"She wanted to change, I think," Kane said. "I'm sure she needed some time to recoup. I can say that the barges are tiresome."

Jonathan raised an eyebrow and grunted. "So, tell me about this Ancient in my labs, Tuesti. What is it you and your—Gast plan to do with it?"

The door opened. The secretary ducked inside, bowing low. "Miss Erda Tinning, returned from Wutai." She put on her best fake smile and bowed back out as Erda entered, closing the door lightly before bothering to look at either of the men inside.

"Hello Jonathan, Kane," she said before plopping herself down in the empty chair beside Kane and making a show of throwing her elbows over the ratty armrests. "Isn't Simon going to join us today?"

"He left with Paer Rolfe to set up the new branch in Nibelheim," Shinra said.

Erda reached for the lighter in front of Jonathan Shinra, almost snatching it from his fingers, and used it to light a cigar she fished from her pocket. Kane suddenly noticed her shirt was puce paisley. Jonathan's eyes rested on her bodice, and Kane thought it unlikely he was being lewd.

"Gone already? Pity, I would have liked to meet this terror of the Wildlands. They didn't have much to say about him in Wutai. No one seems to know much about what happens on the other side of the range, maybe it's because they don't live long enough to tell."

Her eyes caught Kane as if noticing him for the first time. "I would have thought the Vice President would oversee the new branch."

Kane swallowed. Jonathan seemed to notice his discomfort, and he cleared his throat. "Do we have a contract?"

Erda cocked her head as if she had no idea what Jonathan was talking about, when Kane would guess she had an answer prepared. "Contract?" Her expression cleared as if realization had dawned. "You mean with Wutai? No, 'fraid not." A puff of her cigar. The smoke drifted to the ceiling.

Jonathan frowned, but then he heaved a sigh and laughed. "They say there's no one more stubborn than a Wuteng royal. Can't be helped." He patted his desk. "After all, Kane here doesn't have a drop of royal blood in him, and it took me forever to win him over, didn't it?"

Erda sprawled out in her chair, apparently unaware of the minefield she had just seamlessly navigated—instead of taking her free pass, she charged back in. "Had nothing to do with stubbornness," she muttered.

"What was that?"

"I said they weren't stubborn," Erda continued. "I convinced them not to buy."

To his credit, Jonathan attempted to keep his calm. He reached into his drawer for a cigar and a slicer. He contained all his malice into one subtle clenching of a blade. The end of his cigar popped off and rested on the desk.

"Why would you do that?" He chuckled, but it was strained. "Spending too much time with my boy, are you? Wouldn't say you got cold feet, as I imagine it's very warm in Wutai these days."

"The sooner the war ends," Erda said, "the better it is for you, especially if there's a decisive victory. With Paer out of the way, Gold can climb the mountains, and Wutai will surrender with time."

Jonathan frowned. "Miss Tinning, are you aware of your capacity as my employee?"

Erda did not so much as bat an eye. "Yes, President Shinra."

Jonathan folded the corner of one of the papers under the pyramid model Gast had excavated. Kane thought a man of Jonathan's wealth and position must have had a lot of practice preventing outbursts. He couldn't understand why Erda would want to ruffle Jonathan. He had tried to give her an out.

"Does that job description include defying my instructions?"

Erda averted Jonathan's eyes, her usual confidence gone. Kane followed her gaze to the edge of Jonathan's desk. "I maintain I did what I did in the best interest of the company. You don't want to sell weapons forever. If there's no war, you won't sell weapons. You'll sell something else, won't you? A powerful man adapts; that's what makes him powerful. A decisive victory gives your name more meaning."

"To an extent, I agree with you. Time will tell if you've ruined me or made the correct decision." Jonathan cleared his throat. "But it wasn't your decision. Your name is not on the line."

Erda took a puff of her cigar, but she still would not look up. "Suspension?" she offered.

In an instant, Jonathan's general good will and joviality returned. "Excuse me?" He chuckled. "Heavens, no, Erda. What good would that do either of us?"

Wrinkles formed around Erda's eyes. Kane would swear she seemed pained. She looked up from the desk, exhaled a pocket of smoke, and nodded slowly. "Yes, Sir."

"If your decision turns out to be a mistake," Jonathan continued, spreading his hands on the desk, "we'll deal with it as it comes. In the meantime, we have assets down the pipeline, don't we, VP?"

Which, of course, meant more pressure would be applied to Kane Tuesti to produce results. His toes scrunched in his flat tops when Jonathan rounded on him. Erda might as well have dragged him into the fire with her. He swallowed and began to wonder if cigars really did have such a calming effect. He eyed the lighter again with curiosity. He again observed the stack of papers under the pyramid paper weight and wondered that they never caught on fire.

"Kane was about to tell me what he's going to do with that—_thing_ in my basement. You would like to hear about it, too, wouldn't you, Erda?"

Erda dusted off the end of her cigar on the floor and stared resolutely at Jonathan. All trace of pain around her eyes and jaw had vanished. "I already talked to Faremis Gast. He was excited to have someone to brag to. They're sequencing the DNA. I don't really know what that means or why they'd do it, but that's what I've been told."

This morning, Erda had appeared under attack at the thought of the experiments going on with Jenova. It seemed she felt willing to return the favor with her lackluster endorsement of Kane and Gast's research.

When Jonathan received a wave of displeasing news, his hope for unexpected windfall through other avenues increased. He grabbed at whatever asset happened to be nearby and shook it like a honey jar. So when he looked to Kane, he smiled his best coaxing smile and reached across the table to pat his vice president's hand. "Is that a tough job, eh?"

"The proteins aren't pairing normally," Kane said. "All life shares the same basic proteins sequenced together in familiar patterns as its foundation, but Jenova—there's nothing else like it on the entire Planet."

Erda swallowed so loudly Kane heard it. Kane thought she might drop her cigar. Shinra didn't notice her reaction, or if he did, he gave no indication. They were mice in the same cage; Jonathan just had the cheese.

"That would explain her longevity, wouldn't it? The difference?"

"Sir, I don't think you understand—"

Erda cleared her throat. When Kane looked at her, her eyes were stuck on his, yet he couldn't find any help in them. "But it's doable."

It wasn't. It wasn't doable it all. You couldn't make a brick house from sticks.

Kane swallowed. "It's doable."

Because if it wasn't, Kane had nothing to show for his position.

"Splendid," Jonathan glowed. He reached across his desk to squeeze Kane's wrist. His need to express physical affection was a manifestation of desperation. Erda, Kane supposed, had put too many of Jonathan's eggs in Kane's basket before the president was truly ready. "I'm truly blessed to live in a time with so many brilliant minds. Why—I have the resources to make these ideas a reality. Imagine that."

At that moment, Kane realized that Jonathan had never really expected Kane to succeed. He was a gamble. A long shot. A vacation home in Costa del Sol purchased because powerful men like to flex their muscles—simply because they _can_.

"If that's all"—Erda stood from her seat—"I think I have paperwork?"

Kane frowned. Part of him had been relying on Erda making a fuss about Jenova and her treatment. Or whatever her objection had been in front of the building. Kane had wanted it to be his lifeline, an opportunity to make more time. But what was he making more time _for_?

"Then you better get to it," Jonathan said, waving with the back of his hand toward the door to his office. The door closed before he completed his gesture.

Jonathan absently reorganized his papers and refused to look at Kane. Erda had just sent Kane's whole world crashing down. She had refused to defend her decisions in Wutai when Kane _knew_ she could have spun her report into an avenue of delight. Then she had all but promised Gast and Kane's project, a project she had no real knowledge of, would be fast-tracked. Kane wondered of Jonathan averted his gaze out of pity.

Kane Tuesti hesitated to put weight on his feet. He leaned forward and, when Jonathan did not respond, stood and headed for the door.

"Doctor Tuesti?" Jonathan called.

Kane froze with his hand on the doorknob and felt his shoulders cave in toward his neck. "Yes?"

"Good luck, my boy."

Kane turned around to express his appreciation for the sentiment with a nod. Jonathan Shinra's smile split off his chin, and the light through the window made the white in his hair shine as it picked its way through steadily falling sleet.

* * *

_So, long hiatus. But I'm back to working on this, so I thought I would throw up the next chapter. Please review._


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